NationStates Jolt Archive

As you obviously posted far too many times with pretty much the same point in each post.
That would probably be because, as it appears, the person Saint Curie's responding to is an INCREDIBLY slow learner, or is at least disproportionatly obtuse.
You should be giving props to his determination as much as you give to your own, don't you think that would be a non-hypocritical employment of standard?

You start a thread entitled 'Are Atheists compensating for something?' and you accuse others of being pissy? You would do well to heed the teachings of your messiah and take the log from your eye before you pick the splinter from his.
I want to thank you, Randomlittleisland, for reinforcing THE EXACT POINT from my first post. *bows*

I wonder how many others will have to do the same before Kreen gets it.
:(

Nice quote. But I've said before this wasn't a flame, people just turned it into one. Would it make you feel better if I swore on the bible?
You JUST DON'T GET IT, DO YOU?
Truly employing double standards.
That, in itself, is a formidable new standard by which any commerce contigo shall be judged in the future ... as Saint Curie had said (and you'd noted), it would save time.

Indeed it does not, but then again, does being atheist ensure moral conduct either? No.


The difference is, of course, that Atheists don't try to claim that it does....

Do you have full knowledge that God doesn't exist? Of course not, therefore you can't possibly be reasonable by being an atheist, that saves alot of time doesn't it.

That 'logic' might work for Explicit Atheism, but is literally meaningless in context of Implicit Atheism.

Do you have full knowledge that God doesn't exist? Of course not, therefore you can't possibly be reasonable by being an atheist, that saves alot of time doesn't it.

Only by your flawed definitions and axioms, not by mine. Get the difference, please.

And Saint Curie, there is no need to get pissy about it. As you obviously posted far too many times with pretty much the same point in each post.

Each of my postings was in response to things you said. If you consider it "pissy" to for others to have voice equal to yours, too bad. By volume, I haven't posted more than you have.

And, by the way, in all those "far too many" times, did you get the point?

You think I'm a loud religious person? I laugh. I know what a loud religious person is. I've already been through that stage, it doesn't work and it gets people angry at you. See, what I said, I said in a calm manner, I did not say it to start flamming atheists. If I wanted to start flamming atheists I would have said, "Why are atheists so damn loud?" I stated my OP in a manner that would arrouse debate obviously, but not meant to bash or flame atheists. Of course, many people can't handle any opposition to their beliefs and turned this into a flame.

You still don't get that you started the flaming by making the erroneous assumption that all atheists are loud as a clear presuppostion of your original question.

Each of my postings was in response to things you said. If you consider it "pissy" to for others to have voice equal to yours, too bad. By volume, I haven't posted more than you have.

And, by the way, in all those "far too many" times, did you get the point?

Indeed. As I pointed out earlier, the 'opposition' is considered unruly if we don't just 'drop them' and lean over the barrel when we are told to...

I admit... My logic can be and in the case above is fuzzy... I never was great with proofs in geometry.

Nobody is asking for geometric proofs, just clear thought.

So far, you aren't coming through with that either, and when I've clearly show that with your own words, you call it pissy.

At least you're admitting that your logic is fuzzy (a euphemism, but accurate).
Now, you just need to realize that we all don't want to live our lives by the same fuzzy logic that overwhelmed you.

You should be giving props to his determination as much as you give to your own, don't you think that would be a non-hypocritical employment of standard?

Kind of you to say, Straughn.

You've cleanly illustrated Kreen's hypocrisy, but I wouldn't expect Kreen to apply a standard fairly, since that's reasonable and by his definition impossible.

Straughn, your obviously trying to hard to win over me. If you truly believed I was that dumb you wouldn't have spent time it took you to type that up. Instead you would have spent time on another person who might be intelligent enough to understand what you were saying. So this obviously proves Atleast one of the following:
A) you have too much time on your hands
B) you do think I'm intelligent enough to understand it
C) you enjoy insulting me
If not well... I don't really care, cause I don't even remember what we were debating over... Eitherway its a lost cause, cause in truth, I could care less. You on the otherhand are getting provoked. So just chill down, and let your blood pressure settle... Its not healthy to get a heart attack over my own "ignorance".

The difference is, of course, that Atheists don't try to claim that it does....

Bullseye. But be careful, if you point out too many facts that Kreen ignores, it makes you pissy in his view.

Which means that when Kreen walks in to a room that was previously full of informed people, there's suddenly a long line at the toilet.

By the way, this is something I have had to deal with just within the last year and a half...

I've had to deal with it twice so far. What is almost worse is when other family members scold you for being so difficult and call you cruel for refusing to violate your own faith for someone else's comfort.

You know. I don't really care any more. :)

Straughn, your obviously trying to hard to win over me. If you truly believed I was that dumb you wouldn't have spent time it took you to type that up. Instead you would have spent time on another person who might be intelligent enough to understand what you were saying. So this obviously proves Atleast one of the following:
A) you have too much time on your hands
B) you do think I'm intelligent enough to understand it
C) you enjoy insulting me
If not well... I don't really care, cause I don't even remember what we were debating over... Eitherway its a lost cause, cause in truth, I could care less. You on the otherhand are getting provoked. So just chill down, and let your blood pressure settle... Its not healthy to get a heart attack over my own "ignorance".

Straughn has more than enough acumen to answer for himself, but since this an open forum, I'll point out a few things.

If Straugn was provoked, it was by you. Kreen, you love to dish it out, but you can't take it back.

Second, for some, it is habitual to challenge specious reasoning (or "fuzzy", as you call it). I doubt Straughn expects to "win you over". He just can't stand to let grotesquely deformed statements go unchallenged.

In short, the time we spend here is not time spent "on you". Its time spent making sure that the non-fuzzy position is also represented in this public forum.

heh... even your logic isn't perfect.

Taking a step back and a few deep breaths I'd like to respectfully suggest that everyone calm down. Both fuzzy and non-fuzzy logic are kind of degenerating into a contest of volume rather than of content.

heh... even your logic isn't perfect.

But I don't share your belief that it requires "full knowledge" to have reason, or to expect logic to be "perfect".

The point is, when the flaws in my reasoning are illustrated, I respond by either adjusting my position or illustrating why I believe its not flawed.

You just say "pissy" and "I don't care anymore" and "even your logic isn't perfect.".

Do you see the difference?

My logic may not be perfect, but the failures in your own logic are obvious, yet you still ignore them.

Taking a step back and a few deep breaths I'd like to respectfully suggest that everyone calm down. Both fuzzy and non-fuzzy logic are kind of degenerating into a contest of volume rather than of content.

I appreciate the sentiment, but I don't feel particularly agitated, and I stand by my content.

You know. I don't really care any more. :)

Interesting.

Seems like caring through adversity is something Christ would do.

There are far more quiet people than loud, but you never notice them.

There are far more quiet people than loud, but you never notice them.

True story, right there.

Interesting.

Seems like caring through adversity is something Christ would do.
I'm not Christ am I?

Hah, Monty Hall's Goat puzzle. You have full knowledge that the prize is not in the opened door, unless he made a mistake. And you would also have full knowledge that you would improve your odds by switching.You've missed that point, then...

You do not have full knowledge. The knowledge you have is the parameters of the system and a single fact (that one box is definitely empty). You use reason to deduce the most likely state of the 'universe'. You patently do not know the main fact, the whole point of the system, which is where the prize is. It might be in the box you chose first time. Thus your reason might even have diddled you out of the prize, but it is more logical to follow that line than otherwise.

I and you, it seems, would have made the identical reasoned response, and we could be wrong. But based on the knowledge we do know, the constraints of the system, we play for the better odds. And, dagnabit!, we have a 1/3rd chance of being wrong. We're at least lucky we can quantify this 'from outside the system'.

The real world is different, because you obviously have a 'feeling', similar to someone saying "I 'sense' that this box has the prize in it" and sticking to their guns... And if their feeling is right (through accuracy or plain luck) then good for them. But I don't have a feeling. I'm not going to effectively say "none of the boxes have anything in them, I'd rather have the contents of your wallet, Mr Hall", but I'm going to conduct myself in the real world based upon what I know.

So, to me, the real-world equivalent of betting-on-boxes consists of taking all available evidence (the knowledge I have: a significant amount being first-hand, the rest being credibly correct) leading me to my conclusion that I am reasonably to conduct myself as the implicit atheist that I am (with a touch of Agnosticism if/when there's reason to think about that aspect).

You have your feeling about the boxes. Fair enough. In your version of the game, your reason includes a 'sense' that the box you chose (the one with God in it) is the right one. But if you came to see me play the game, with boxes designed around the things I know and observe, don't start telling me that the box labelled 'Darwin, and all that jazz' is empty, because when I pick it up it has quite a bit of weight to it. Not only that, but the box labelled "Young Earth Creation" has already been shot full of holes, and you can see right through it [edit: it is possible, of course, that David Copperfield or some similar figure, has made the box 'look' like it is shot full of holes, but that'd be a leap of imagination]. So now my choice is between an obviously heavy box and one that never really held water in the first place. Which one would you say is rational for me to subscribe to?

But if you don't like the way I've stretched the analogy, I don't blame you, it's far from perfect. The boxes were never intended as an alagory, merely to show rationale applies even (or maybe especially) when complete knowledge is lacking. Maybe I should have used the "blind men and elephant" example, because that would have been much easier to expland to full-blown alagory for humanity and their separate interpretations of the world.

I'm not Christ am I?

Its the internet you never know. I may be elvis >.>

Its the internet you never know. I may be elvis >.>I'm Elvis! (And so's my wife...)

Its the internet you never know. I may be elvis >.>
You'd have to have some pretty 1337 skills to jump through all those laws in quantum physics that would otherwise prevent that...

You'd have to have some pretty 1337 skills to jump through all those laws in quantum physics that would otherwise prevent that...

Looks like someone needs to watch Bubba Ho Tep.

Looks like someone needs to watch Bubba Ho Tep.
Wha?

Wha?

http://www.bubbahotep.com/

I'm not Christ am I?

Nope, not in any way I can see thus far.

Real powerful testimony to your Christianity, isn't it?

You'd have to have some pretty 1337 skills to jump through all those laws in quantum physics that would otherwise prevent that...

Given that you tend to choke on basic if/then statements, are you sure you want to open the ball on quantum mechanics?

Nope, not in any way I can see thus far.

Real powerful testimony to your Christianity, isn't it?
Personally, I know my faith is strong, so I don't care what you say to me.

Given that you tend to choke on basic if/then statements, are you sure you want to open the ball on quantum mechanics?
Whats with the soreness about starting another debate?

http://www.bubbahotep.com/
Awesomeness. :D

Personally, I know my faith is strong, so I don't care what you say to me.

So, your 'faith' is beyond question?

I'm not sure that I'd consider that to be 'faith'... or if it is faith, it sounds like 'blind' faith.

Personally, I know my faith is strong, so I don't care what you say to me.

So, when shown that you act in an manner contrary to the teachings of Christ, you respond by saying "I'm not Christ".

And then you tell me how strong your faith is.

I think you should present that sequence to the other Christians, and see what they think.

So, your 'faith' is beyond question?

I'm not sure that I'd consider that to be 'faith'... or if it is faith, it sounds like 'blind' faith.
Its not blind faith. I've questioned it many times but it has held through, thus I consider it to be strong.

Quite being sore sports. Just because you didn't "win" the debate doesn't mean you have to start another.

Whats with the soreness about starting another debate?

Another question that includes a faulty presupposition...

I have no soreness whatsoever about discussing quantum mechanics with you.

But this thread demonstrates that you have a history of ignoring statements that you can't cope with. I just don't think it will provide much opportunity for productive discourse in an area that is modeled largely through mathematics.

To be clear, I'm not claiming to know more about physics than you, I'm saying that you have a history of poor reasoning.

Quite being sore sports. Just because you didn't "win" the debate doesn't mean you have to start another.

You're confusing obstinance with conviction.

The fact is, most people who go back and read this thread will see what you are, both in how you feel about acting like Christ and your general capacity for thought.

That's all I wanted, and its all I got.

Having a mind that lacks the ability to organize thoughts well does that.

Its not blind faith. I've questioned it many times but it has held through, thus I consider it to be strong.

Have you questioned it with the calibre of analysis that you've demonstrated here?

If you blow on a Jenga tower and it doesn't fall down, it doesn't make the tower strong.

Seriously, go back and read the last half-dozen pages and see how much you've failed to address. That's why I'm still here.

Having a mind that lacks the ability to organize thoughts well does that.

Then, again, I implore you. Give some fair disclosure. In your signature or elsewhere, give the warning label:

"Kreen's statements are made by a mind that lacks the ability to organize thoughts well".

I'm not saying that to be rude, but people have the right to know that about you when they decide how much credibility to give you.

EDIT: Didn't you describe yourself as "near genius" on one of the intelligence threads? Is your nigh-genius in the area of music, or modern art, or something that wouldn't be evident here?

You're confusing obstinance with conviction.

The fact is, most people who go back and read this thread will see what you are, both in how you feel about acting like Christ and your general capacity for thought.

That's all I wanted, and its all I got.
I said that I was not Christ. And indeed I am not. As to my beliefs Christ was perfect as far as his actions. I have done things that although I don't truly regret, I still occasionally wonder about. And you don't know my capacity for thought as this thread is a poor representation of it. Written expression is definitely not my strongest ability by a longshot. I'm a big picture thinker, not a detail oriented square.

Have you questioned it with the calibre of analysis that you've demonstrated here?

If you blow on a Jenga tower and it doesn't fall down, it doesn't make the tower strong.

Seriously, go back and read the last half-dozen pages and see how much you've failed to address. That's why I'm still here.
No, I have seriously debated the possibility if God exists, and if Christianity is the right path for me. I've decided that God does exist, and that Christianity is the right path for me. You want me to read the last six pages? fine But i'll do it tomorrow, its 11pm where I live now, and I have school tomorrow.

Then, again, I implore you. Give some fair disclosure. In your signature or elsewhere, give the warning label:

"Kreen's statements are made by a mind that lacks the ability to organize thoughts well".

I'm not saying that to be rude, but people have the right to know that about you when they decide how much credibility to give you.

EDIT: Didn't you describe yourself as "near genius" on one of the intelligence threads? Is your nigh-genius in the area of music, or modern art, or something that wouldn't be evident here?
I am quite gifted in music, but that is part of one's intelligence only if you use the multiple intelligence scale, on the IQ I scored 146.

I could ask the same thing of you. You're obviously religious: why are religious people and organization so noisy about evangelizing and incorporating their specific tenets into government? Why are you specifically being so noisy about not liking vocal atheists? There's no atheist equivalent of the Jehovah's Witnesses, the 700 Club, etc. etc. No atheist tries to get religious worship banned, but plenty of Christians take every chance to try to make us a theocracy.
False. There are alot of aethist that try to bar worship. Now of course not all do; just like not all Christians take every chance to make it a theocracy.

And you don't know my capacity for thought as this thread is a poor representation of it. Written expression is definitely not my strongest ability by a longshot. I'm a big picture thinker, not a detail oriented square.

For your sake, I hope that first part is true.

"detail oriented square"?

There are people in the world that can address both abstractions and details. Having one ability doesn't preclude the other.

No, the argument isn't good at all, the rhetoric's only use is to distract the target from the appalling logic, your entire argument is one piece of faulty logic (Pascal's wager) with a lot of empty sophistry around it.

Let me try and explain why Pascal's wager doesn't work.

The argument

1. If one believes in God and God exists then there is infinite gain.
2. If one believes in God and God doesn't exist then there is no loss or gain.
3. If one doesn't believe in God and God exists then there is infinite loss.
4. If one doesn't believe in God and God doesn't exist then there is no loss or gain.

Therefore it is a better bet to believe in God as you have the chance of infinite gain and avoid the chance of infinite loss.

This is effectively your argument (ie. if God exists then it will be bad for you).

The refutations

1. If God is all knowing then he will know if people are genuinely believing or if they're pretending to believe because it's the better bet statistically.
2. Worshipping Jesus could get you sent to hell by Yahweh if the Jews are right (remember the first commandment, "for I am a jealous God").
3. You are assuming that belief is the only catergory for judgement, most other religions place the emphasis on actions.
4. This logic would only work if the odds of God existing or not is exactly 50:50. If the chance of God existing is very slim then the advantages of non-belief (time saved not going to church, reading the bible, praying etc. extra-marital sex and generally more control over your life) would outweigh the risks.

In other words, genuine belief cannot come from Pascal's wager and it is useless. The rhetoric's only purpose is to confuse and distract the target from the faulty logic.

But it's not about the asking of "if" as a probability, it's about making the other person think :/. I already know God exists, but if I simply assert that He exists and will judge people for their sins, then it can hurt in terms of the other person understanding. Though of course, it's not bad to assert this, it's just not the best possible way to do things when you can normally have the other person participate in the reasoning process. If I simply ask the "If God exists...." statement without actually seeming like I support the situation being a probability and instead show that I am operating on the principle for only the one option of God's existance which fits the Bible, then I won't come across as saying I don't know if God exists and neither can the other person, im simply asking the other person to think about the situation for a second, and what their sins would mean for them assuming God is a being of infinite justice. Now, admittedly, I can't really do that very well on a forum like this, (And so far I don't think I have very much or at all done it) because there are hours in between each reply mostly, (and I can only do this about once a couple hours very late every night most of the time) so if I stopped to ask questions to everything one at a time, it would be weeks before I could finish the conversation, and it could easily get forgotten in the meanwhile. I sort of supposed I could make up for it with the advantages of a forum, namely, making my thoughts as compleate and clear as possible all at once to negate the disadvantages of not being face-to-face, but I suppose it wasn't to be in this case heh.
I'd like to answer your refutations one by one if I may. On the first one, like I said, it's not supposed to be about dragging people to Christ through probabilities, it's about showing people how an infinitly just God must punish Sin, and then showing how that same God excercises His infinite love by providing us with a free way out that His own Son payed for. If I can't show that, then you're probably right, all i'll be able to do is convince people to "give it a go" so to speak, which pretty much never turns out well as there's not much earnestness to trust compleatly in Christ, as a probability of being wrong would of course hold one back i'd think. My argument that you've claimed as not being good doesn't have to mean that im depending on probabilities to show people the way, (I guess it could, but I didn't mean for it to seem like that.) what im trying to do is say something like "If 1+1=x, then shouldn't x equal 2?" It's not supposed to be complicated or bringing people down to a choice of looking at probabilities and weighing the risks.
On your second refutation, I think I might of covered it mostly up above, but it looks like your trying to make a side point there about God being a jealous God, which of course He is, but i'd just like to point out that jealousy alone isnt exactly a sin. Jealousy pretty much always involves coveting something that doesn't belong to oneself, whether it be over someone else's money, job, car, lot in life, etc. etc., and coveting is of course a violation of the 10th commandment. But because the Israelties were God's chosen people and in the beginning were made by Him anyway, they belong to Him, so He had plenty of right to be jealous over them, as they were already His possesions so to speak. (I don't mean like a cruel slavemaster or some weird sense like that or anything, I mean like a father.)
Thirdly, you bring up an excellent point there, most other religions do advocate action over faith. But then, how could the ultimate form of judgement in any of those religions actually be ultimately just? Like with Islam for example, you've got the Qu'ran saying that those who's scales of righteousness tip heavily in that direction will get to heaven, yet those who's scale tip only lightly with righteousness will go to hell. Well, assuming that people there would go to heaven, if you had someone who, lets say for example, had 60 percent righteousness so to speak and 40 percent badness, then by that kind of standard, they'd go to heaven. But then, what about that 40 percent? and the other percents of badness left behind by everything else? It's not being judged at all, meaning that in effect, the authorities in those religions would have to be ignoring evil, and thusly, cannot be infinitly Just. But God, the way the Bible describes, is infinitly just, and therefore, we all would of course have a problem if things were just left at that, because He must judge all sin, the amount or balance of it in a person doesn't matter, because He can't ignore anything and still be compleatly just. Of course, thing's wern't just left to that end, as Jesus came to give us the opportunity to be saved by taking the justice meant for us and suffering for it all himself for those who would trust in Him, not just most of the sin or a great amount of it, every last bit of it, otherwise, we would still have to be judged guilty by God.
On your last refutation, you are bringing up the point quite clearly that if it was all dependent on showing people probabilities, that it would be pretty difficult indeed for people to really want to weigh in compleatly for Christ. But as i've said, "If God is...." statements don't necessarily have to mean that I am asking to weigh the options, it should technically be asking the person to consider what would happen if an infinitly just God judged us....though, admittedly, I am not exactly the world's greatest evangelist by any means, maybe I got that out wrong at first, sorry if I did :(.

You're taking Deuteronomy out of context here friend, if you read the whole of Deuteronomy 32 then you'll find that the fire is a earthly fire, God is planning to kill the people through famine, plague, wild animals and enemy warriors:
(Err, I couldn't quote this)
Friendly huh?

As you can see, God is taking a material, not a spiritual revenge. This fits better with the beliefs of the Hebrews, they viewed God as meting out justice in this world, Sodom and Gomorrha are prime example of this belief.

Oh, and while I am pleasantly surprised that you know about Sheol I'm afraid it doesn't mean hell by any stretch of the imagination, it can mean grave but it can also refer to a kind of afterlife quite unlike both heaven and hell. Here's a link (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=614&letter=S&search=sheol).

I would be very surprised if the New Testament used the hebrew word 'Sheol', especially as it was written in Greek... However, this does nothing but reinforce my claim that Hell only appeared after the Hebrews came into contact with religions which did have fiery afterlives, i.e. in the New Testament.

It's true, that verse is also referencing earthly plauges and the like for the Israeli people, and yes, I got your idea about how "friendly" it sounded. But what the Bible says doesn't just have to be divided into referring about either just earthly punishment or just hellish punishment, it can reference both, and considering most fires which scorch over the earth and decimate everything do not have to come from the low realms of death, it looks to me like it's clear that God's justice would be so great even Hell would get involved in it, which could mean either the punishment on earth would be like Hell, or that people who were being punished up on earth would be going there, either way,(Or any others you can think of) it refers to both judgement on earth and in Hell. Now it does seem true that any old realm of death from below could technically mean a volcano or something, however, I don't even think there are any volcanoes in Israel, and even if their are, why should they be the realms of death specifically?
On the Sheol thing, its true the link you provided never said it meant Hell, but it did say the original etymology is unknown, so it could be that the original meaning of that word way back when the Bible was written meant Hell along with those other definitions, languages can after all radically change their definitions over time. At any rate, there are plenty of other verses that show instances of Sheol as meaning at the very least hell-ish places, such as Pslams 49, Job 10:21, and Pslam 88:12. And sometimes it seems references are made to Hell-like places without using Sheol in the OT, (Found this from http://www.yeshuatyisrael.com/sheol.htm ) Job 31:12, Pslam 88:11, and Proverbs 15:11 would be examples of this...and admittedly, I didn't know that before :/.

Friend, if you really think that you could get everyone in the world to agree on anything at all then I'm afraid you are terribly naive.

Technically I could, but the probability for that happening and nobody lying to me for some joke or something to ruin it is probably too unlikely to bother with :/.

No, I have seriously debated the possibility if God exists, and if Christianity is the right path for me. I've decided that God does exist, and that Christianity is the right path for me. You want me to read the last six pages? fine But i'll do it tomorrow, its 11pm where I live now, and I have school tomorrow.

But your version of the Christian path seems to include "I don't have to try to behave as Christ because I'm not Christ".

The devout Christians I know seem to be under the impression that they need to try their best to act like him, even though they aren't him and never can be.

Also, no problem on the time thing. We're not on any kind of schedule here, so get back to it whenver you want to.

Its not blind faith. I've questioned it many times but it has held through, thus I consider it to be strong.

Aha... but what you said was:

"Personally, I know my faith is strong, so I don't care what you say to me".

Thus, it doesn't matter what is said to you, your faith cannot be changed, yes?

In other words... if Jesus arrived in your presence right now, and said... "Shit, don't know how to tell you... the Mormons were right all along"... your response would be.... what?

According to your claim above... it wouldn't matter... you'd stick with your 'version'... no?

Quite being sore sports. Just because you didn't "win" the debate doesn't mean you have to start another.

Didn't 'win' the debate?

You made a (flamebait) assertion that Atheists were some generalised rule of obnoxiousness...

Your assertions have been shown to be shallow and untrue. In other words, you got handed your proverbial ass on a plate.

I wonder what you would have considered a 'win'.

I am quite gifted in music, but that is part of one's intelligence only if you use the multiple intelligence scale, on the IQ I scored 146.

Curious. I'm not sure I'd have assumed ANY connection between 'musical ability' and 'intelligence'... since the one is not reliant upon the other.

Oh - by the way... IQ scores are irrelevent unless you actually state the age at which you 'scored'...

I am quite gifted in music, but that is part of one's intelligence only if you use the multiple intelligence scale, on the IQ I scored 146.

Not to be difficult, but whenever I hear an assertion like that, I have to ask, which battery did you take?

I am quite gifted in music, but that is part of one's intelligence only if you use the multiple intelligence scale, on the IQ I scored 146.

Gotta love the Christ-like humility.

I have no gift for music, myself, so perhaps you can remind me. Are there not atonal styles of music that don't require subsequent notes/chords to have any melodic regard for one another?

snip
I wonder what you would have considered a 'win'.
Ignorance? :)

Ignorance? :)

No, no. He calls it "disorganized thoughts".

No, no. He calls it "disorganized thoughts".
:) Oh well then

I would have chose discombobulated (just cause I like the word) as a discriptor for my thoughts then :)

The wole problems is that you are preaching hellfire. Sure, you aren't screaming or talkling up God's hate, but your entire argument revolves around forgiveness, guilt, and ultimately hell. It is the same point in slightly less extreme clothes. Further, you're looking for something someone feels guilty about, but your ideas of what someone needs to feel guilty about are so tied into existing Christian philosophy that you won't get very far with anyone who isn't from that background. A week doesn't go by where I don;t break half a dozen commandment, and if you're talking about the extreme interpretations of The Way of the Master, a day doesn't go by when I don't break eight. Do I fell guilty at all? No, because I'm not a Christian, I do not respect the Christian God, and His commandments mean nothing to me. Where do you go from there?

You have a point, I do refer greatly to the reality of Hell in my posts. But the thing is, im also mentioning Christ's salvation and God's love in there, something hell-fire preaching generally doesnt do or does very sparingly, and im not taking the existance of Hell beyond anything Biblical, like the stuff Jonathan Edwards did with God supposedly dangling us all over Hell like spiders that were only kept aloft by His, what, I think Edwards said amusement? That stuff just's not right, it's not Biblical that God is only keeping us from Hell because of His "amusement", and by sticking to the Bible in what im saying, I don't really have to go off on page after page about how bad Hell is, because the Bible doesn't describe Hell for that long. Nextly, I can understand the aversion to feeling guilt, after all, it is an unpleasant emotion. However, unpleasant emotions are very helpful, they can tell us when it's time to take our hand off of the pot of boiling water, they can tell us when its time to flee from the oncoming motorcycle, or they can tell us when it's time not to listen to that guy urging us into the alleyway for some of that "good stuff". If bad-feeling emotions can help us know things on earth, why not help us realize things about God? Yes, I understand that this is apparently the root of the problem so many people seem to have with "scare tactics" in Christianity and any other religion with bad consequences listed in them, and I can understand that, but you've got to realize, this isn't about laughing at scared little children after we frighten them about the things of God, this is about earnestly trying to save people's very eternal existance, it is not some sadistic game that Christians play with people's emotions, (I realize it can often look like it is, but if you see people actually playing a sadistic game with people's emotions, you should realize that's as far from Biblical evangelism you can possible be pretty much.) this is real life, and it will be a real eternity for everyone, no matter where they end up. And because we know this, how then can we ethically not try to use everything we can to convince people to obtain salvation through faith in Christ? Also, your not alone with breaking almost all the 10 commandments daily, I do it too, far too many times a day to count, and I never like it in the end. Im not on some elevated pedastel of morality from anyone else by any means, being free from sin does not mean I am immune to commiting it. Lastly, if you have actually earnestly asked yourself if you've ever told a lie,stolen, used God's name as a cuss word even when people don't do that to Hitler, or lusted after people, or anything else which is evil according to the Bible, and either refuse to acknowladge that any of that is bad or are just going over it too quickly to think about it, I can't just digitize myself and come out of your computer screen and shake you around until you consider things. If you refuse to acknowadge God, His justice, His mercy, or anything else, I can't force you to do it...but it's still bad that you won't :/.


First of all, Mormon and Jehovah's Witnesses would be heretics in your worldview. There is a difference. A heretic remains partly a member of the sect but has a radically different (and, to the mainstream, inaccurate) interpretation of the faith. All rpotestantism started out as sects heretical to the Roman Catholic Church. A little bit of history will go a long way.

Now, to address the points you have made above. Most apostates would fall into the second group, and I know that I do. As hard as it is for a committed Christian to believe, there are people for whom the faith does not work. People who have a radical disagreement with basic tenets of the philosophy, people who are not comforted. There are also people simply lose the ability to believe, people who have had experiances which have made the Christian faith inaccessable to them.

Well, if there's a difference there, then I guess you have a point. But judging who is Christian from a human perspective is very different than how God will judge things, just because people don't feel that its bad for people to leave the "mainsteam" of the Bible doesn't mean God will consider it right. Technically speaking, Protestantism was created to get more back to the Bible anyway......But anyway, you bring up an issue that's actually a bit more complex, many times with the church's today you'll get sermons that don't work right for people so to speak because they literally are not Biblical sermons. Everything from the prosperity gospel, to ignoring absolute truth, to making false prophecies, making a show of things, the list goes on and on, and people often rightly recognize it's ridiculous because it's often a double standard and hypocracy. Often times, churches do convert people who become less able to have faith, because they were never brought in correctly in the first place, they probably got the Gospel all well and fine, but never saw why they needed it, namely because of a lack of being taught the Law, and about sin. The Bible says that the Law is perfect for converting the soul, and it's not kidding, from the figures i've heard evangelistic churches have a new decision loss rate of about 85-90 percent of new converts, who probably never converted in the first place, not because they were purposefully doing anything wrong, but because nobody really told them what was right most of the time. Then of course, there's the backslider, (which you seem to mention in your last sentence) someone who's probably more often than not recieved a message of "You've got a God shaped hole in your heart, and only Jesus Christ can fill it. Now, Christ will give you peace, love, joy, happiness, a new car, a better mortage rate, you'll win the lotto, your hair will grow back, you'll have more energy and spunk etc. etc. etc." which generally tries to win converts through, more often than not, making up benefits to Christ, rather than needlessly "offending" people by suggesting that Christ might of died because they did something wrong. So when they rely on Christ, and the troubles the Bible promises will befall Christians end up coming, they become an angry and embittered backslider some of the time, because as far as they know, they were told an outright lie about Christianity. Then, of course, it's then much harder to actually get them to see what Christianity is supposed to be if you ever see them again, because they've got an impression that Christianity is horrible, and that they shouldn't listen anymore.

Unforgiveable sins and unforgivable sinners. I find it disturbing that the only things that qualify are those who refuse to bow. A rapist or a murderer can be redeemed, but not a dissident. That, my friend, is why so many of us view conversion as an act of violence.

It's not that simple by any means, if it was, then we'd all of commited this sin simply by refusing to bow the moment we were born, even though we likely wern't even aware of anything. It means more like you know who God is, you know who Jesus is, you know what Jesus did, you know why He did it, you understand correctly that He did what He did out of love for you, and you understand correctly that God wants you to obtain everlasting life and know everything about what is in the Bible and how to obtain everlasting life and STILL hate the idea of submitting, and in the context of the Bible, call God basically the same thing as Satan. The Preists that Jesus talked to about this were high preists of Judaism pretty much, they should of known very well that Jesus was fulfiilling everything, and they should of realized that Jesus was Lord, yet they called Him Satan anyway. When you do such a thing with full understanding of what your doing and who your calling Satan, in so doing it is a sin not against Christ which can be forgiven, but a sin against the Holy Spirit. There's a more detailed explanation here though:http://www.carm.org/questions/blasphemy.htm

I'm going to have to disagree. Christianity was not spread at all through south or central American except through violence. Even if a particular missionary did not come with the conquistadors the locals knew that he was of the same race, that he came from the same land. The threat of violence was there. The spread of Christianity through Europe was similarly aggressive. Ever wonder why Christmas and Easter fall on or near the high holy days of pagan religions? Ever wondered why so many Catholic saints are so similar to heathen Gods? When the Chruch came in they took over the shrines, took over the days, coopted the Gods, and comandeered the culture. Those who continued to follow the old ways were witches. We know how they were dealt with. Ever wondered why there are no more Druids in the British Isles? I'll give you a hint, it involves genocide.

Even beyond the spread of Christianity, Christians have always used violence to supress competing beliefs. You have the crusades, the spanish inquisition, the murder of french Hugonauts by the Pope's army on St Batholomew's day in 1572, the systematic extermination of heretical sects all through the middle ages including the extermination of the cathars, the burning and destruction of the Knights Templar, the Salem witch trials, the murder of Mormons in the American south by protestants, the reign of Mary I of England, the prosecution of Jews for hundreds of years in Europe culminating the in the Catholic Chruch's silence near support of the holocost. Christianity hasn't been a religion of peace since the day Christians gained enough political power to kill those who dare dissent. After all, theres all those unforgivable sins...

You raise many valid sounding points. But for many valid sounding points, there are often valid sounding counter points, such as: http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/ (Scroll down to where it talks about the Spanish Inquistion) where this website points out that radical Islamics kill more people every year than the Spanish Inquistion killed in 350 years, that should help put things in more perspective. As for Druid genocide, (If I remember correctly, that was done by the Franscescan order?) I think the Holocaust, easily non-christian,( http://answers.org/history/hitquote.html ) more than proves that the genocide the ancient church commited wasn't even comparable on such a scale as genocide we know, especially when the popular 6 million figure doesn't even throw in Christians, Gypsies, Homosexuals, and other prisoners of the Nazis. As for conquistadors harassing the Aztecs and Incas, I would think the genocides under Communist Russia trump that several magnitudes over, and have far more than enough figures left over to cover everything else you mention. If the things the church did to spread itself were really so always violent, they certainly would of done more damage than more localized massacers of the modern day which already resulted in staggering, genocidal death tolls, and Humanity would probably be dead from such a long time of near-constant genocide. It's true that, pretty much constantly, as Christianity spread, it was often regrettably sphearheaded by people who clearly either didn't care about or mis-understood that the Bible tells us to love our enemies and bear many hardships for Christ, not to start delivering them out, but the point is, even when Christianity was spread with horribly un-biblical practices, it was nowhere near as bad as to make every single evangelistic effort violent and horrible, otherwise, about half the world's population might be missing if you ignore China.


I'm glad to live in a world where education and freedom have come together in such a way as to allow people to question.

As for your question, I think that Nietzsche answered it better than I ever could:
Eh, sorry I couldn't fit the Nietzche quote in the response so it looked more clear, but anyway, I would also agree it is good to allow people to question, if I couldn't question for one, how could I be constantly viligant against the false prophets and teachings the Bible constantly warns about, and have been constantly on-going almost since Christianity began? Even today, I have to concentrate and be on guard a great deal against pastors on T.V, or even friends at school, just to make sure they aren't trying to preach something un-biblical or tell me some garbage method of comprimising that they feel would help me "loosen up"; there are so many un-Biblical methods of preaching and living out there that end up in people losing it all, that if we couldn't question things and find out the truth for ourselves to at least some degree, we would be in a very sorry state indeed. The Bible does specifically tell us to test everything....except God of course, that's a bad idea. But you really won't need to, generally if you feel like you need to test God, you probably aren't looking at the right source of information about God anyway.

Judging is a form of thinking, so do me a favor and substitute the word "think" for the word "judge", and you will have finally made a reasonable statement about yourself.

For other people, when they choose what to worship, and what to obey, they are making a judgement. It does require them to judge. Its sometimes called "due diligence of thought" or "taking responsibility for what you base your life on".

And it absolutely does require judgement.

Just not the kind that kills children for the crimes of their parents.

If the Bible was really outlawing thinking, then we would all be doomed whether Christ came or not, as we would be sinning simply by thinking "Ok, im going to surrender myself to Christ", and that wouldn't be right. You can think without judging people.

You can think without judging people.

In no way did I say that the Bible "outlaws thinking".

EDIT: To be clear, your statement was that you weren't "making the judgement", you were only "repeating it", and that doesn't require you to judge. But it does. Everytime you repeat and ratify somebody else's judgement, you're making a judgement of your own.

I said that choosing a religion involves making a judgement, which you said you don't make.

By the things you've said, you've judged those children as deserving death for what the parents did (an axiom which has been illustrated as untenable as a concept of justice). You make that judgement when you describe God as "infinitely just" for doing it.

I notice you don't seem to answer questions, you just make tangential statements with flawed suppositions.

. The Bible does specifically tell us to test everything....except God of course, that's a bad idea.

Heh, that's hilarious.

A belief system that says:

"Test everything, but not our main premise. That's a bad idea."

Hm. I'm an atheist.

Of course we are compensating for something. We are compensating for the manical, religious freaks out there. Put the two of us together and you get an agnostic.

I go to a Lutheran Christian school (only because the education is swell), and am required to attend chapel and take 'religious ethics' classes, not that they are constructive or any real good at all. From being, as they say, in the belly of the beast, I have begun to appreciate the fact that some people need faith. They must believe in something, whether it be fact, fiction, or undefined, because it gives them hope. This does not mean I am turning my back to my beliefs, well, lack there of, but I have discovered some meaning to this life by understanding the driven goals of other to find meaning in THEIR lives.

This may not mean much, however, hope and love do fuel our emotions. Polonius put it quite nicely when he said "This is the very ecstasy of love". This madness is what keeps the human race stable. It is our instability that truly defines us as human. Some of us wish to accept one linear thought, and defy the basic human craving for knowledge. Pandora's fault: curiosity. Some of us wish for a more dynamic and thoughtful approach; all the wonders that quantum physics and calculus holds in store for us to discover. Others wish to live in the moment, defy time, and live in peace with themselves and the rest of the world, for simplicty's sake. Really, it is up to one to define who they are. That is what life is. It is a journey, a quest, to find out how your conscience works. This is what epiphanies are delievered from. A sudden burst of clarity, of true insight. This is what the Church meant by "Final Rite", when it began. We all have the right to know ourselves.

I am only 17. This is my knowledge. I have lived around the world for the past 11 years, so this is not a close-minded activity meant mearly to amuse myself. Threads such as these provoke thought, and everyone is bound to thinking.

Provole thought in your friends, peers, family. Obtain knowledge, whether to build upon or even to curbe it into a kind of spirituality, in order to find yourself. :rolleyes:

A quiet atheist... yes... thats makes sense.
Btw the other day i met an intelligent republican.

There are intelligent Republicans all around you. Most liberals are too busy shouting "You're stupid!!!!" to notice, however.

If the Bible was really outlawing thinking, then we would all be doomed whether Christ came or not, as we would be sinning simply by thinking "Ok, im going to surrender myself to Christ", and that wouldn't be right. You can think without judging people.


Can you?

Does not the tree from wich Eve ate the apple represent the "tree of knowledge".
Is not Genesis saying that man first sinned when he began to learn?
Why would an intelligent god, prefer to keep his creations ignorant?
Its a little to strange to suggest that this only applied to certain knowledges,
like the knowledge of mortality, and suffering, but as we all know, while sometimes painful, knowledge of such things is crucial to proper human development.

So then, coupled with this example, and the general policy of asking questions that either cannot be answered, or simply suggesting that such matters all "boil down to a matter of faith", how isnt this telling us, by example, not to truely think for ones self, and simply accept that wich is told to us by a book, or even a local priest/pastor/reverend?

You have a point, I do refer greatly to the reality of Hell...

The 'reality' of Hell.

I have yet to see one piece of good evidence that would allow me to state 'Hell' as fact.

Didn't 'win' the debate?

You made a (flamebait) assertion that Atheists were some generalised rule of obnoxiousness...

Your assertions have been shown to be shallow and untrue. In other words, you got handed your proverbial ass on a plate.

I wonder what you would have considered a 'win'.
Grave, I am disappointed in you. I thought you spoke fluent Forumspeak.

As you should all be well aware, to "win" a debate on the internets means "to arbitrarily decide that one's own position is the correct one and that the opposition is a bunch of dingbats, regardless of the substance of any discussion that may (or may not) have actually occured."


Oh - by the way... IQ scores are irrelevent unless you actually state the age at which you 'scored'...
See, and here's another such point of confusion.

Not only must one make lingusitic adjustments when conversing over the Internets, one must also be sure to employ the correct conversions for various units.

In the case of IQ scores, to calculate an individual's actual IQ you take the digits of their self-reported score and add them together. For example, if an individual posts that they have an IQ of 143, the adjusted score in real-world values is 1 + 4 + 3, for a total of 8 IQ.

Grave, I am disappointed in you. I thought you spoke fluent Forumspeak.

As you should all be well aware, to "win" a debate on the internets means "to arbitrarily decide that one's own position is the correct one and that the opposition is a bunch of dingbats, regardless of the substance of any discussion that may (or may not) have actually occured."


See, and here's another such point of confusion.

Not only must one make lingusitic adjustments when conversing over the Internets, one must also be sure to employ the correct conversions for various units.

In the case of IQ scores, to calculate an individual's actual IQ you take the digits of their self-reported score and add them together. For example, if an individual posts that they have an IQ of 143, the adjusted score in real-world values is 1 + 4 + 3, for a total of 8 IQ.

I am shamed by my interwebal noob-ness. WTF.

:D

(One of the most amusing posts I have read in some time... my thanks).

I am shamed by my interwebal noob-ness. WTF.

As well you should be. I'll let you off the hook this once, but next time it'll be 15 minutes in your Shame Corner.

;)


(One of the most amusing posts I have read in some time... my thanks).
Not at all. I'm happy to provide public services such as web-to-reality translations and unitary conversions.

Ok, just because of space concerns I'm going to have to trim your quotes down a tad.

You have a point, I do refer greatly to the reality of Hell in my posts. But the thing is, im also mentioning Christ's salvation and God's love in there, ... Lastly, if you have actually earnestly asked yourself if you've ever told a lie,stolen, used God's name as a cuss word even when people don't do that to Hitler, or lusted after people, or anything else which is evil according to the Bible, and either refuse to acknowladge that any of that is bad or are just going over it too quickly to think about it, I can't just digitize myself and come out of your computer screen and shake you around until you consider things. If you refuse to acknowadge God, His justice, His mercy, or anything else, I can't force you to do it...but it's still bad that you won't :/.

What you don't understand is that the hellfire preaching and salvation are two sides of the same coin. You could focus entirely on how good of a guy God ios and how much he leoves you and wants to save you. In the end, theres still the threat, even if you never speak it. The threat isn;t about morality, but about submission. Worship God or burn. You can sin, as long as you feel bad about it you're fine, just so long as you bow. I'm not that servile.

Also, I don;t seem to be getting my point across. It is not that I say "God damn" and feel guilty but ignore it, I don't push the "bad emotions" to the back of my head. I just don't feel them. I do not view myself as beholden to some 5000 year old tribal diety or his 2000 year dead avatar. I have a different moral system, different ethics, different opinions about right and wrong. I see nothing wrong with graven images, I respect other Gods far more than Jehova or YHVH, I hate those who tresspass against me and I feel no guilt. It is not that I am in denial or don't understand, it is that I have seen the light and found it repulsive on a fundamental level.

It's not that simple by any means, if it was, then we'd all of commited this sin simply by refusing to bow the moment we were born, even though we likely wern't even aware of anything. It means more like you know who God is, you know who Jesus is, you know what Jesus did, you know why He did it, you understand correctly that He did what He did out of love for you, and you understand correctly that God wants you to obtain everlasting life and know everything about what is in the Bible and how to obtain everlasting life and STILL hate the idea of submitting

Actually, that was exactly what I was saying. It is that simple. I know, you believe and you find it hard to imagine that anyone would do that. Still, it says something about Christianity that the ONLY thing that is unforgivable is to refuse to submit. Murder, rape, genocide, war against the faith, all can be forgiven, but a good man who will now bow will burn. That is not the stance of a loving god, that is the stance of a tyrant.

You raise many valid sounding points. But for many valid sounding points, there are often valid sounding counter points, such as: http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/ (Scroll down to where it talks about the Spanish Inquistion) where this website points out that radical Islamics kill more people every year than the Spanish Inquistion killed in 350 years, that should help put things in more perspective. As for Druid genocide, (If I remember correctly, that was done by the Franscescan order?) I think the Holocaust, easily non-christian,( http://answers.org/history/hitquote.html ) more than proves that the genocide the ancient church commited wasn't even comparable on such a scale as genocide we know, especially when the popular 6 million figure doesn't even throw in Christians, Gypsies, Homosexuals, and other prisoners of the Nazis. As for conquistadors harassing the Aztecs and Incas, I would think the genocides under Communist Russia trump that several magnitudes over, and have far more than enough figures left over to cover everything else you mention. If the things the church did to spread itself were really so always violent, they certainly would of done more damage than more localized massacers of the modern day which already resulted in staggering, genocidal death tolls, and Humanity would probably be dead from such a long time of near-constant genocide. It's true that, pretty much constantly, as Christianity spread, it was often regrettably sphearheaded by people who clearly either didn't care about or mis-understood that the Bible tells us to love our enemies and bear many hardships for Christ, not to start delivering them out, but the point is, even when Christianity was spread with horribly un-biblical practices, it was nowhere near as bad as to make every single evangelistic effort violent and horrible, otherwise, about half the world's population might be missing if you ignore China.

So it is ok because others have had higher body counts and in the end a good thing was done? There are several things you have ignored in your response. Most glaringly is that every one of the 20th century mass murders you mentioned happened in a world with far greater population. More to my original point, Christianity was not spread with love but with violence. You said it wasn't, I said it was, now you concede and say that it was ok because others have done worse. Bullshit. Christianity has, traditionally, used violance as a way to control it's followers and silence dissent, the fact that you have had to reach to Islamic fundamentalism, Stalin's Russia, and the Final solution to find higher body counts speaks volumes.

Eh, sorry I couldn't fit the Nietzche quote in the response so it looked more clear,

What the quote was saying is that the only reasons Christians have stopped murdering and torturing dissenters is because they no longer have the power to do so. Christianity didn't stop being violent because it learned better, it stopped being violent because it no longer had the power to get away with it. Like it or not, blood is the unifying theme of Christianity, thats your history, thats your heritage.

The 'reality' of Hell.

I have yet to see one piece of good evidence that would allow me to state 'Hell' as fact.

Ever been to the DMV? Makes me think that some Bugghists are right when they say hell is earth. Seriously, is soap and deodorant THAT hard to come by peope?!

Ever been to the DMV? Makes me think that some Bugghists are right when they say hell is earth. Seriously, is soap and deodorant THAT hard to come by peope?!

Ah... good point. I may have to recant. ;)

But it's not about the asking of "if" as a probability, it's about making the other person think :/. I already know God exists, but if I simply assert that He exists and will judge people for their sins, then it can hurt in terms of the other person understanding. Though of course, it's not bad to assert this, it's just not the best possible way to do things when you can normally have the other person participate in the reasoning process. If I simply ask the "If God exists...." statement without actually seeming like I support the situation being a probability and instead show that I am operating on the principle for only the one option of God's existance which fits the Bible, then I won't come across as saying I don't know if God exists and neither can the other person, im simply asking the other person to think about the situation for a second, and what their sins would mean for them assuming God is a being of infinite justice. Now, admittedly, I can't really do that very well on a forum like this, (And so far I don't think I have very much or at all done it) because there are hours in between each reply mostly, (and I can only do this about once a couple hours very late every night most of the time) so if I stopped to ask questions to everything one at a time, it would be weeks before I could finish the conversation, and it could easily get forgotten in the meanwhile. I sort of supposed I could make up for it with the advantages of a forum, namely, making my thoughts as compleate and clear as possible all at once to negate the disadvantages of not being face-to-face, but I suppose it wasn't to be in this case heh.

I'm afraid you're still following the Wager, you've simply added extra stages inbetween the main points.

I'd like to answer your refutations one by one if I may. On the first one, like I said, it's not supposed to be about dragging people to Christ through probabilities, it's about showing people how an infinitly just God must punish Sin, and then showing how that same God excercises His infinite love by providing us with a free way out that His own Son payed for. If I can't show that, then you're probably right, all i'll be able to do is convince people to "give it a go" so to speak, which pretty much never turns out well as there's not much earnestness to trust compleatly in Christ, as a probability of being wrong would of course hold one back i'd think. My argument that you've claimed as not being good doesn't have to mean that im depending on probabilities to show people the way, (I guess it could, but I didn't mean for it to seem like that.) what im trying to do is say something like "If 1+1=x, then shouldn't x equal 2?" It's not supposed to be complicated or bringing people down to a choice of looking at probabilities and weighing the risks.

A better comparison would be saying "1+x=y, if y equals 2 then you're going to Hell, are you willing to risk x being 1?"

The point is that by threatening eternal punishment if your opponent is wrong then unless you can prove that they are wrong then you are simply asking them if they're willing to take the risk. You yourself admit in the last sentence that it's all about 'weighing the risks' and as belief can't simply be switched on or off nobody can decide to believe simply because it's the best bet.

On your second refutation, I think I might of covered it mostly up above, but it looks like your trying to make a side point there about God being a jealous God, which of course He is, but i'd just like to point out that jealousy alone isnt exactly a sin. Jealousy pretty much always involves coveting something that doesn't belong to oneself, whether it be over someone else's money, job, car, lot in life, etc. etc., and coveting is of course a violation of the 10th commandment. But because the Israelties were God's chosen people and in the beginning were made by Him anyway, they belong to Him, so He had plenty of right to be jealous over them, as they were already His possesions so to speak. (I don't mean like a cruel slavemaster or some weird sense like that or anything, I mean like a father.)

I'm afraid you missed my point, I wasn't attacking the idea of God being jealous, I was pointing out that if God does exist but Jesus wasn't his son then worshipping Jesus would be blasphemy against God (Yahweh or Allah in this example). Even if it made more sense to believe there is still no reason to believe in the Christian god.

Thirdly, you bring up an excellent point there, most other religions do advocate action over faith. But then, how could the ultimate form of judgement in any of those religions actually be ultimately just? Like with Islam for example, you've got the Qu'ran saying that those who's scales of righteousness tip heavily in that direction will get to heaven, yet those who's scale tip only lightly with righteousness will go to hell. Well, assuming that people there would go to heaven, if you had someone who, lets say for example, had 60 percent righteousness so to speak and 40 percent badness, then by that kind of standard, they'd go to heaven. But then, what about that 40 percent? and the other percents of badness left behind by everything else? It's not being judged at all, meaning that in effect, the authorities in those religions would have to be ignoring evil, and thusly, cannot be infinitly Just. But God, the way the Bible describes, is infinitly just, and therefore, we all would of course have a problem if things were just left at that, because He must judge all sin, the amount or balance of it in a person doesn't matter, because He can't ignore anything and still be compleatly just. Of course, thing's wern't just left to that end, as Jesus came to give us the opportunity to be saved by taking the justice meant for us and suffering for it all himself for those who would trust in Him, not just most of the sin or a great amount of it, every last bit of it, otherwise, we would still have to be judged guilty by God.

True justice is a mixture of pragmatism and mercy, to use the Muslim view point Allah is infinitely merciful and no merciful god would condemn a basically nice person to hell for eternity, that is infinite punishment for finite sin and that in itself would be unjust.

On your last refutation, you are bringing up the point quite clearly that if it was all dependent on showing people probabilities, that it would be pretty difficult indeed for people to really want to weigh in compleatly for Christ. But as i've said, "If God is...." statements don't necessarily have to mean that I am asking to weigh the options, it should technically be asking the person to consider what would happen if an infinitly just God judged us....though, admittedly, I am not exactly the world's greatest evangelist by any means, maybe I got that out wrong at first, sorry if I did :(.

You haven't gone beserk and you are willing to admit mistakes, that makes you better than many of the evangelists I've encountered.

But I maintain my position: you are still talking about risk and so the argument fails.

It's true, that verse is also referencing earthly plauges and the like for the Israeli people, and yes, I got your idea about how "friendly" it sounded. But what the Bible says doesn't just have to be divided into referring about either just earthly punishment or just hellish punishment, it can reference both, and considering most fires which scorch over the earth and decimate everything do not have to come from the low realms of death, it looks to me like it's clear that God's justice would be so great even Hell would get involved in it, which could mean either the punishment on earth would be like Hell, or that people who were being punished up on earth would be going there, either way,(Or any others you can think of) it refers to both judgement on earth and in Hell.

In my opinion it seems to be simply hyperbole. In order to look at it from your perspective you must first aquire the concept of Hell from the New Testament, it is not innate in the tract.

Now it does seem true that any old realm of death from below could technically mean a volcano or something, however, I don't even think there are any volcanoes in Israel, and even if their are, why should they be the realms of death specifically?

There are no volcanoes in Israel, the Hebrews originally had no hell.
There are volcanoes in Italy and Greece, the Romans and Greeks had a fiery hell.
There are no volcanoes in Norway or Sweden but the cold was a terrible peril, the Norse had an icey hell.

Notice a pattern?

People looked for explanations for volcanoes, they saw molten rock and fire coming out of the volcanoes and so they assumed (correctly) that there was fire and molten rock under the earth. As humans traditionally look upwards for their gods they assumed that demons lived below and so the concept began. That's my explanation anyway.

On the Sheol thing, its true the link you provided never said it meant Hell, but it did say the original etymology is unknown, so it could be that the original meaning of that word way back when the Bible was written meant Hell along with those other definitions, languages can after all radically change their definitions over time. At any rate, there are plenty of other verses that show instances of Sheol as meaning at the very least hell-ish places, such as Pslams 49, Job 10:21, and Pslam 88:12. And sometimes it seems references are made to Hell-like places without using Sheol in the OT, (Found this from http://www.yeshuatyisrael.com/sheol.htm ) Job 31:12, Pslam 88:11, and Proverbs 15:11 would be examples of this...and admittedly, I didn't know that before :/.

It could have meant hell but that is purely speculation and seems highly unlikely, are people really likely to forget the existance of a place of eternal torment that they need to avoid?

1 Hear this, all you peoples;
listen, all who live in this world,
2 both low and high,
rich and poor alike:

3 My mouth will speak words of wisdom;
the utterance from my heart will give understanding.

4 I will turn my ear to a proverb;
with the harp I will expound my riddle:

5 Why should I fear when evil days come,
when wicked deceivers surround me-

6 those who trust in their wealth
and boast of their great riches?

7 No man can redeem the life of another
or give to God a ransom for him-

8 the ransom for a life is costly,
no payment is ever enough-

9 that he should live on forever
and not see decay.

10 For all can see that wise men die;
the foolish and the senseless alike perish
and leave their wealth to others.

11 Their tombs will remain their houses [a] forever,
their dwellings for endless generations,
though they had named lands after themselves.

12 But man, despite his riches, does not endure;
he is [c] like the beasts that perish.

13 This is the fate of those who trust in themselves,
and of their followers, who approve their sayings.
Selah

14 Like sheep they are destined for the grave, [d]
and death will feed on them.
The upright will rule over them in the morning;
their forms will decay in the grave, [e]
far from their princely mansions.

15 But God will redeem my life [f] from the grave;
he will surely take me to himself.
Selah

16 Do not be overawed when a man grows rich,
when the splendor of his house increases;

17 for he will take nothing with him when he dies,
his splendor will not descend with him.

18 Though while he lived he counted himself blessed—
and men praise you when you prosper-

19 he will join the generation of his fathers,
who will never see the light of life .

20 A man who has riches without understanding
is like the beasts that perish.


I'm sorry? I don't see any reference to hell here, simply a warning against the ultimate futility of materialism.

21 before I go to the place of no return,
to the land of gloom and deep shadow, [b]

22 to the land of deepest night,
of deep shadow and disorder,
where even the light is like darkness

Sounds like Sheol to me: dark and shadowy but with no actual punishment.

11 For that would have been shameful,
a sin to be judged.

12 It is a fire that burns to Destruction [a] ;
it would have uprooted my harvest.

There is no reason to assume that the reference to destruction is not meant in physical terms, as all of his other punishments would have been. For each of his earthly crimes he named an earthly punishment, destruction is merely a culmination of that. It is also worth noting that for a farmer the burning of their harvest would be destruction, it would destroy their source of food and their ability to grow more next year.

1[a] [b]
O LORD, the God who saves me,
day and night I cry out before you.
2 May my prayer come before you;
turn your ear to my cry.

3 For my soul is full of trouble
and [B]my life draws near the grave. [c]

4 I am counted among those who go down to the pit;
I am like a man without strength.

5 I am set apart with the dead,
like the slain who lie in the grave,
whom you remember no more,
who are cut off from your care.

6 You have put me in the lowest pit,
in the darkest depths.

7 Your wrath lies heavily upon me;
you have overwhelmed me with all your waves.
Selah

8 You have taken from me my closest friends
and have made me repulsive to them.
I am confined and cannot escape;

9 my eyes are dim with grief.
I call to you, O LORD, every day;
I spread out my hands to you.

10 Do you show your wonders to the dead?
Do those who are dead rise up and praise you?
Selah

11 Is your love declared in the grave,
your faithfulness in Destruction [d] ?

12 Are your wonders known in the place of darkness,
or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?

13 But I cry to you for help, O LORD;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.

14 Why, O LORD, do you reject me
and hide your face from me?

15 From my youth I have been afflicted and close to death;
I have suffered your terrors and am in despair.

16 Your wrath has swept over me;
your terrors have destroyed me.

17 All day long they surround me like a flood;
they have completely engulfed me.

18 You have taken my companions and loved ones from me;
the darkness is my closest friend.

Noting to see here, merely a sick old man begging for a postponement of his death. Note the parts in bold:

'10 Do you show your wonders to the dead?
Do those who are dead rise up and praise you?
Selah

11 Is your love declared in the grave,
your faithfulness in Destruction [d] ?

12 Are your wonders known in the place of darkness,
or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?'

Effectively saying, "How can I worship you if I'm dead?" Sheol is apart from God and nobody worships him there.

I seem to remember Moses disuading God from raining fire and brimstone on some of the Israelites using the same logic but I'm afraid I can't remember the reference at the moment.

Right, last one:

Death and Destruction [a] lie open before the LORD—
how much more the hearts of men!

It is interesting to note that 'Death and Destruction' in this context are interchangable with the words 'Sheol and Abaddon'. Abaddon was the angel of destruction and so this proverb simply seems to back up the Hebrew belief of divine retribution in this lifetime.

Technically I could, but the probability for that happening and nobody lying to me for some joke or something to ruin it is probably too unlikely to bother with :/.

Can you think of any statement that would meet universal agreement?

There are intelligent Republicans all around you. Most liberals are too busy shouting "You're stupid!!!!" to notice, however.
Not quite, it's more a matter that the loudmouth Republican idiots are not just the majority but the rest of them who AREN'T the loudmouth Republican idiots are too spineless and lacking moral integrity to stand apart from them after years of fellative, lock-step numberservice.
More to the point, admittedly, Bush endorses QUITE a few of these "liberal" attributes you're idiomizing about, and he still has the support of the majority of those idiot Republicans you were talking about. *nods*
But ... that's another several threads.

In no way did I say that the Bible "outlaws thinking".

EDIT: To be clear, your statement was that you weren't "making the judgement", you were only "repeating it", and that doesn't require you to judge. But it does. Everytime you repeat and ratify somebody else's judgement, you're making a judgement of your own.

I said that choosing a religion involves making a judgement, which you said you don't make.

By the things you've said, you've judged those children as deserving death for what the parents did (an axiom which has been illustrated as untenable as a concept of justice). You make that judgement when you describe God as "infinitely just" for doing it.

I notice you don't seem to answer questions, you just make tangential statements with flawed suppositions.

Ok, this one might be my fault for not explaining everything I suppose, something I intend to rectify starting now: Matthew 7:1-2, "Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. "

When Jesus was saying "For in the same way you judge others,...." He meant other people. The prohibition on Judging is not to never use judgement in anything, it's to not judge people. For example, right now it would be a violation of this verse if I asserted to someone here or anyone else anywhere that they will go to Hell because they lusted after a person. How could I possibly know if they won't become a Christian in the future to make up that sin and every other sin of theirs, or that their not really a Christian who's brain is being controlled by government forces or something? Anything is possible in this world, it is a crazy place, and thusly, not only could I not know the information to have knowladge of such a judgement on my own, but in the same standard I would hypothetically be using against a person, I, in turn, would then be judged for every lustful though i've ever had, as I would of applied a measurement of lustful thoughts, and thusly recieve such judgement against myself....if I hypothetically made such a judgement of course, which I seriously dought i'd leave unrepented for long even if I did do something like that, im not lacking on that much common sense to so easily ignore such a simple command from Christ. But going on in this, when I say that the children God has said must be punished for their father's sins back in OT times actually will be punished, im not making the judgement on them anew, I am simply affirming the judgement God made, I have to make a judgement call to accept God's word on it of course, but I don't use that judgement call to condemn the children myself, I just use it to agree with God, which doesn't require me to judge anyone. Yes, technically speaking, I could try to judge the children anyway....and then be sinning, so therefore, I won't. If you feel that this is a tangential statement with a flawed assumption, it's not my decision your arguing with here, it's God's, I didn't make the judgement up and certainly couldn't make a truly accurate one even if I was the person making the judgement.

Anyway, to make a judgement on whether to accept Christ or not, I don't need to judge others, I simply have to have a memory that can recall that i've done wrong and lots of it, and common sense enough to know that belief in Christ is needed to recieve salvation of sins due to His perfection and act of atonement for us all, and then gusto enough to go for it and surrender myself to Christ. Nowhere do I have to judge anybody, I don't need to judge God because I already know He is infinitly just and good anyway, and I don't need to judge Christ because I know if Christ could be judged guilty for any sin, my faith would be pointless, so if I had to judge anyone to recieve Christ, something would be drastically wrong with my understanding of everything.

Can you?

Does not the tree from wich Eve ate the apple represent the "tree of knowledge".
Is not Genesis saying that man first sinned when he began to learn?
Why would an intelligent god, prefer to keep his creations ignorant?
Its a little to strange to suggest that this only applied to certain knowledges,
like the knowledge of mortality, and suffering, but as we all know, while sometimes painful, knowledge of such things is crucial to proper human development.

So then, coupled with this example, and the general policy of asking questions that either cannot be answered, or simply suggesting that such matters all "boil down to a matter of faith", how isnt this telling us, by example, not to truely think for ones self, and simply accept that wich is told to us by a book, or even a local priest/pastor/reverend?

The tree wasn't just the tree of knowladge, it was the tree of knowladge....about good and evil. You can still know information while not knowing what good and evil is, otherwise, how could Adam and Eve of agreed to not eat the apple, they wouldn't of been able to comprehend such a command. When they knew what was good and evil, they didn't just gain that knowladge, they knew it was wrong for them to of gained it, because they directly disobeyed God.

There are intelligent Republicans all around you. Most liberals are too busy shouting "You're stupid!!!!" to notice, however.

Kinda like how most republicans are shouting "Liberals are too busy shouting "You're stupid!!!!" to notice!" to notice most don't? ;)

"I simply have to have a memory that can recall that i've done wrong and lots of it," "surrender myself to Christ." Nowhere do I have to judge anybody, so if I had to judge anyone to recieve Christ, something would be drastically wrong with my understanding of everything.

Nowhere do I have to judge anybody.

Wrong judgment of self is deemed to be needed according to you.

Hmm does the next statement apply?

so if I had to judge anyone to recieve Christ, something would be drastically wrong with my understanding of everything.

Sounds like a poisen pill for guilt to me.

I'd re-evaluate the first people to walk the planet, the talking snakes, the people living in fish, the tower of babble, and the piller of salt fairy tales if I where you. Seems like a nice and easy way to put away the bondage you put yourself in by agreeing to uncriticly accept fairy tales.

Short lie detection methodology. If it sounds to good to be true ( ie The Bible and many con schemes ) it probly is . If the fish is to dang big to be real ( ie The Bible and many con schemes ) it probly isn't real. If some one tells you something they have no means by which to know ( ie The Bible and many con schemes )[/I] they probly made it up. [I]

It's a great way to easily dismiss crap without even needing to take the time to investigate.

Ok, just because of space concerns I'm going to have to trim your quotes down a tad.


What you don't understand is that the hellfire preaching and salvation are two sides of the same coin. You could focus entirely on how good of a guy God ios and how much he leoves you and wants to save you. In the end, theres still the threat, even if you never speak it. The threat isn;t about morality, but about submission. Worship God or burn. You can sin, as long as you feel bad about it you're fine, just so long as you bow. I'm not that servile.

Ok, fair enough, it's just I've always gone on the assumption that Hellfire preaching was basically just focusing on Hell with a few creative hyperbole's thrown in and a lack of ability to convey a sense of God's love and the gospel. Generally, when you run across failed evangelism, it's either leaning totally on the Gospel without using the Law and the reality of God's judgement so nobody knows why to become a Christian, or it goes way too much into Hell and Damnation, without really showing the way out or that God is actually good, and just makes people either get extremely offended and leave or repent without actually knowing who Christ really is most of the time. Or, people just don't even try to use either, and just use their own opinions on philosophy, and just plain don't understand Christianity in the first place :/. Good evangelism has to be able to use both the Law and the Gospel, because the Bible says that the law is perfect for converting the soul, and of course you have to give out the gospel for anyone to know the Good News of Christ and be saved. So if you want to say it's hell-fire preaching because I mention Hell in my posts, I can't stop you, but from the impressions i've always gotten on the subject, Hell-fire preaching focuses only on Hell, not just containing Hell somewhere in the message :/. Worship God and burn isn't supposed to be the whole message, it's worship God because He loves you and the Bible says He wants to save you, because otherwise, He must send sinners to Hell, it's by His very nature as an infinitly perfect and just being, He can't violate it or He couldn't be perfect.

Also, I don;t seem to be getting my point across. It is not that I say "God damn" and feel guilty but ignore it, I don't push the "bad emotions" to the back of my head. I just don't feel them. I do not view myself as beholden to some 5000 year old tribal diety or his 2000 year dead avatar. I have a different moral system, different ethics, different opinions about right and wrong. I see nothing wrong with graven images, I respect other Gods far more than Jehova or YHVH, I hate those who tresspass against me and I feel no guilt. It is not that I am in denial or don't understand, it is that I have seen the light and found it repulsive on a fundamental level.

It sounds like if you thought Jesus was merely an avatar and that God was a tribal deity, you couldn't of actually been refusing the real light anyway :/. The thing is, anyone who doesn't know God and knows just a couple limited things about the Bible can scream and rant against God until the day is over, but they might as well be talking to a rock, because if they don't actually know who God is yet try to curse Him anyway, their just cursing a god that doesn't actually exist except in their own mind, and therefore they can't be cursing God. I'll type more about the unforgiveable sin on your next paragraph, but on the not feeling guilt thing, you've still got to have a concience, im not saying that you're lying to me or anything, because of course people can spend the time unfortunently to suppress what their concience tries to say so much that they can't even feel the guilt starting. But you've still got to have a concience nonetheless, just one that's....really suppressed. May I ask, when was the last time you felt guilt over something?

Actually, that was exactly what I was saying. It is that simple. I know, you believe and you find it hard to imagine that anyone would do that. Still, it says something about Christianity that the ONLY thing that is unforgivable is to refuse to submit. Murder, rape, genocide, war against the faith, all can be forgiven, but a good man who will now bow will burn. That is not the stance of a loving god, that is the stance of a tyrant.

It's not that I find it hard to imagine, it's just that to truly do it would require such an obscene amount of hatred and evil in one's heart against all that is good and kind, and I find it hard to believe such a person would be calmly responding to me about Christianity on a forum for a game, even if this is technically the general forum. The thing is, with the unforgiveable sin, like I mentioned earlier, you've got to fully understand and acknowladge who God is. You have to understand and acknowladge that God is compleatly supreme, that He is infinitely powerful, infinitely knowing, infinitely good, a being of infinite love, a being of infinite justice, and you would have to fully realize that He sent His Son to die so that all who will believe in Him and trust compleatly in Him will be saved, and you would have to compleatly know and admit all of this is true about God, and not simply be able to casually dismiss God, but to see God as all these things, and still compleatly and earnestly look God basically straight in the eye, with total understand of what your doing, and still equate God with Satan, and have hatred for God anyway, despite fully admitting to yourself that God wants to save you and everyone else through love. If you don't admit that God is any of these qualities like God tells us He is, then you can't blaspheme the Holy Spirit, you can only insult a God of your own design that doesn't exist. And your telling me you fully acknowladged that God wanted to save you, that He loves you, and even while seeing that God wants to save you through love, not tyranny, (If you think God is looking to save souls through tyranny, even if you believe it steadfastly, it doesn't make God's nature change.) that you still denied Him and basically equated Him to satan? It's a pretty tall order of hate to commit blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, this goes way beyond the hate that allows people to commit genocide and murder and racism and so on. Oh, and I nearly missed it in your paragraph, but God tells us that no man is truly good, so there isn't a good man who won't bow anywhere, because there are no good men besides Christ, who was also God anyway, and certainly didn't call Himself satan anyway.


So it is ok because others have had higher body counts and in the end a good thing was done? There are several things you have ignored in your response. Most glaringly is that every one of the 20th century mass murders you mentioned happened in a world with far greater population. More to my original point, Christianity was not spread with love but with violence. You said it wasn't, I said it was, now you concede and say that it was ok because others have done worse. Bullshit. Christianity has, traditionally, used violance as a way to control it's followers and silence dissent, the fact that you have had to reach to Islamic fundamentalism, Stalin's Russia, and the Final solution to find higher body counts speaks volumes.

I was trying to shift off of the focus of merely naming figures, as I was trying to explain how it couldn't possibly of been 100 percent violent in its spread or nobody would of survived. the world population might not of been so large back then, but when Islamic fundamentalists kill more people in 6 months than in decades of the spanish inquistion, the numbers just don't add up, Earth wasn't that lonely. I think we might be mis-understanding each other here on definitions though, it seems to me if your simply saying that Christianity spread through violence, that wouldn't necessarily mean that all of it was violent, though it looks to me like your saying it was 100 percent violent 100 percent of the time, until one day it just suddenly stopped. You can't find any religion on earth that hasn't had someone have a violent reaction ever, (Even Buudhists can't possibly of contained every last violent notion in their beings to themselves, there had to be at least one of them doing something slightly violent) and if your talking about how just part of Christianity spread through violence, that doesn't mean that the message of Christianity is wrong, it simply further attests to how people can be wrong. I could reach into less famous figures though if you'd like to compare more things to Christianity's history, the millions (Or maybe less, im not sure how the figures have changed) of people who die in car crashes every year in America probably more than meets the match in sheer numbers of most anything the Church ever did except maybe that genocide to druids they commited, which I don't even know figures on....

What the quote was saying is that the only reasons Christians have stopped murdering and torturing dissenters is because they no longer have the power to do so. Christianity didn't stop being violent because it learned better, it stopped being violent because it no longer had the power to get away with it. Like it or not, blood is the unifying theme of Christianity, thats your history, thats your heritage.
Neither history nor heritage change anything about what Christ said, just because a very large amount of people totally abused or ignored Him and His message to murder or hate (and continue to do so today, some people claiming to be Christians still blow themselves up in or around abortion clinics sometimes, so there's still people murdering for sure) supposedly in His name doesn't mean Christ was wrong, it merely attests to how people can be wrong, murder and violence is the unifying thing of men perhaps, but not of Jesus. You simply cannot take the Bible in context and get the idea that Jesus want's us all to force other people into Christianity by murdering them all until they convert. You can rip the Bible out of context all day long sure, but if you are looking for the Bible to say something and will do anything to imagine it says it, then nothing is forcing you to understand the Bible literally, you can think the Bible means whatever you or anybody else in the world want it to mean, but it won't change what it actually means.

Anyway, to make a judgement on whether to accept Christ or not, I don't need to judge others, I simply have to have a memory that can recall that i've done wrong and lots of it, and common sense enough to know that belief in Christ is needed to recieve salvation of sins due to His perfection and act of atonement for us all, and then gusto enough to go for it and surrender myself to Christ.

Most your post was your usual "If I write a lot, maybe they won't notice its all just the same flawed assumptions", but I think the above needs to be responded to specifically.

Do you understand that your above statement is equivalent to saying that anybody who doesn't believe in Christ has no common sense?

You don't have gusto, you have bigotry.

Most your post was your usual "If I write a lot, maybe they won't notice its all just the same flawed assumptions", but I think the above needs to be responded to specifically.

Do you understand that your above statement is equivalent to saying that anybody who doesn't believe in Christ has no common sense?

You don't have gusto, you have bigotry.

Actually more than that. There is another oddity in there.

and common sense enough to know that belief in Christ is needed to recieve salvation of sins due to His perfection and act of atonement for us all, and then gusto enough to go for it and surrender myself to Christ.

Not that Christ is needed but a belief in Christ. In otherwords one must convince themself of Christ in order to avoid hell. This has some real implications. Such as those who do not see the supposed evidince of Christ as convincing. Those people are doomed less they can some how push doubt out of their mind. Seems to me what he's saying is those who do not abandon their minds will burn and those who have enough common sense to abandon thier minds and uncriticaly accept Christ will get rewarded.

I'm afraid you're still following the Wager, you've simply added extra stages inbetween the main points.

But those extra stages are what is supposed to make people think about God and infinite justice assuming that it is true, not trying to think that it could merely have a chance to be true and to think about that, then everything gets gummed up in semantics like you've pointed it. You can ask people to assume things are compleatly true just for the sake of contemplating something, especially something rooted in ideas about Infinite justice and the like, rather than just saying "God exists....think about it."

A better comparison would be saying "1+x=y, if y equals 2 then you're going to Hell, are you willing to risk x being 1?"

But then it's just the same, because it would be 1+x=2, and therefore x=2-1, so x=1, and the equation is just 1+1=2 again. Besides, im not trying to change 1+1 to not equal 2, im trying to say that knowing you've done wrong, and assuming God exists and must be perfectly just, then therefore if everything goes logically then God must judge you guilty. But after that, the point to get across is that 1+1 always equals 2, and that 2, as in the guilty judgement against your sins, can instead be forgiven through payment by Christ, rather than you having that 2 end up sending you to Hell. Hell is not supposed to be the objective here :/.

The point is that by threatening eternal punishment if your opponent is wrong then unless you can prove that they are wrong then you are simply asking them if they're willing to take the risk. You yourself admit in the last sentence that it's all about 'weighing the risks' and as belief can't simply be switched on or off nobody can decide to believe simply because it's the best bet.

No, I think I said "It's not supposed to be complicated or bringing people down to a choice of looking at probabilities and weighing the risks.", there's a "not" in there, im saying it's not supposed to be complicated or about getting people to weigh the risks.

I'm afraid you missed my point, I wasn't attacking the idea of God being jealous, I was pointing out that if God does exist but Jesus wasn't his son then worshipping Jesus would be blasphemy against God (Yahweh or Allah in this example). Even if it made more sense to believe there is still no reason to believe in the Christian god.

It's just I thought I could head something off was all and get to explain some more Biblical stuff I hadn't discussed before to boot :). I think i've explained the other half in my other explanations above already though about probability wagering.

True justice is a mixture of pragmatism and mercy, to use the Muslim view point Allah is infinitely merciful and no merciful god would condemn a basically nice person to hell for eternity, that is infinite punishment for finite sin and that in itself would be unjust.

Ah, now you bring up something else that can be very interesting to discuss, just who's standards are you getting that definition of true justice from? Since we truly can only see sin in a finite manner and God can see it with infinite justice, how can the two systems of man's justice and God's justice hope to compare? Also, if Allah really is infinitly merciful, why does the Qu'ran say that if the balance of good works doesn't outweigh the bad one's, you go to Hell? The thing is, the Qu'ran wasn't written in ancient Hebrew because that language was pretty much gone by that time, it was probably written in Arabic, so I don't know about the Arabic word for "Hell", but I don't see how you'd get the same problems over "sheol" with it, and therefore, the Qu'ran clearly states Allah apparently does not forgive all if your works aren't in your favor, and you supposedly get a seat in hell for this. And also, i'd like to bring up something else if I may, to us humans down here, other people might seem good or bad to us, but to God, everyone is bad because God's infinite justice must apply a perfect standard to us, and the Bible says that we are all born into sin and that no man is truly good...except Jesus of course, but He was also God anyway. Because no man is good, this is why Christ had to come, it wasn't a matter of us mostly not being able to overcome an evil deficit and God sending a few people to Hell anyway who were good, it was a matter of we can't possibly do a single thing to save ourselves simply by our own actions because everyone has already failed to meet the mark.

You haven't gone beserk and you are willing to admit mistakes, that makes you better than many of the evangelists I've encountered.

But I maintain my position: you are still talking about risk and so the argument fails.

I might go berserk in the future, who knows, I might fail to keep up my faith in Christ and do something i'll regret, stuff happens :(

In my opinion it seems to be simply hyperbole. In order to look at it from your perspective you must first aquire the concept of Hell from the New Testament, it is not innate in the tract.

Well I certainly can't force you to accept anything, but let me try to acquire that concept in some of the verses below you go over.

There are no volcanoes in Israel, the Hebrews originally had no hell.
There are volcanoes in Italy and Greece, the Romans and Greeks had a fiery hell.
There are no volcanoes in Norway or Sweden but the cold was a terrible peril, the Norse had an icey hell.

Notice a pattern?

People looked for explanations for volcanoes, they saw molten rock and fire coming out of the volcanoes and so they assumed (correctly) that there was fire and molten rock under the earth. As humans traditionally look upwards for their gods they assumed that demons lived below and so the concept began. That's my explanation anyway.

Yes, I see the pattern, but there's more to it, the Greek religion didn't just say Hades was just a bunch of flames, there was a river where souls were literally drowing in for all eternity or something, and in many books of Greek mythology like Oedipus it is also described as a multi-tiered sort of system where there are also plains that souls go to to suck the blood out of sheep or something. The Greeks, of course, could of added in the plains thing from the harsh plainslands around their area, and of course could of gotten more inspiration from the mediterranian, but then, why would the Hebrew's not get inspiration for Hell from the mediterranian when they eventually reached the Promised Land, and why not get inspiration from the desert they lost many lives from to make a Hell myth of their own? On the other hand, assuming God really was there and was causing all those death's Himself out of judgements against extremely awfully acting people, and was actually trying to describe a literal Hell to His people in the Torah and through prophets which had nothing to do with deserts or oceans and more to do with eternal fire, darkness, forgetfulness, and a permanent state of separation from God, then it seems to me the Jewish religion would be more in line with....well....something like the Bible.


It could have meant hell but that is purely speculation and seems highly unlikely, are people really likely to forget the existance of a place of eternal torment that they need to avoid?

Why of course, even in today's society, we are generally taught to forget scary things like Hell and just enjoy life and freedom to the fullest, after all, many people seem to believe it is proven we evolved from chimpanzees, and you don't see chimpanzees trying to be Christians to flee from the wrath to come, you see them enjoying themselves whenever possible as wild animals. The religions that often corrupted the Israelites often had very similar philosophies back when they kept forgetting about Hell and God in OT times. Think about it, Christianity was the dominent religion of much of the world for a good long time (At least, it was supposed to be Christianity...but that's a whole other can of worms) and most definently did teach that Hell was a reality,(Assuming people were teaching it Biblically) yet somehow, just in recent times, as people have decided not to be Christians in much larger numbers apparently, much of society must of forgotten compleatly about Hell, because I sure don't see people running around in mass panic from not being saved and having to think about Hell waiting for them all the time. If people didn't forget Hell, they would always be wanting to be saved, so everyone would want to respond to the Gospel to be saved. But of course, many people express very little interest these days in being saved, so it appears to me at least that everyone has either forgotten about Hell or is purposefully forgetting it to enjoy their lives while they still are alive.

I'm sorry? I don't see any reference to hell here, simply a warning against the ultimate futility of materialism.

8 the ransom for a life is costly,
no payment is ever enough-

9 that he should live on forever
and not see decay.

It seems to me if one is dead and just sits there in the grave that they can't actually "see" themselves decaying, if that's how the lives of those who were unsaved ended, they'd just stop existing so to speak, and the Bible says God created our souls to exist eternally, they can't simply just stop existing. However, if someone went to heaven, then this verse says they wouldn't see decay, but if they do not gain eternal life in heaven, they get eternal death in hell, where everything is decaying and dead and bad and...yea, it's not a nice place.

Sounds like Sheol to me: dark and shadowy but with no actual punishment.

But the Bible only mentions either heavenly or hell-ish places, no reference to anything in between or on the side is ever really presented as the eternal fate of man, and you would think if God sent His only and perfect Son to die on the cross for all our sins, you'd think He would be trying to save us from something that He felt was worth sacrificng His own Son for. Heaven isn't shadowy, dark, disorderly, or gloomy like in this verse, and that means Hell must be what is being referred to here.

There is no reason to assume that the reference to destruction is not meant in physical terms, as all of his other punishments would have been. For each of his earthly crimes he named an earthly punishment, destruction is merely a culmination of that. It is also worth noting that for a farmer the burning of their harvest would be destruction, it would destroy their source of food and their ability to grow more next year.

Ah but here's the thing, remember that God made our souls so that they last for eternity, so since it would be going to destruction those souls can't possibly really be destroyed, so such destruction has to be eternally on-going, the sort of thing you only get from definitions of Hell. It's true, Job could of been going on about earthly punishment, but if you look farther down to verse 14, Job says, "what will I do when God confronts me?
What will I answer when called to account?".
Being called to account is very similar to the Judgement day described in the New Testiment referring to a day in which God will judge all mankind, so if God is calling people to account in some form back in time here, then it must mean that the Israelties understood that God must judge everyone's sins, and therefore render a decision of innocent or guilty, and those who are guilty and have not had their sins payed for can't simply stop existing because it would violate the nature of something God created to exist forever, so those souls can only go to Hell if God render's an infinitly just decision.



Noting to see here, merely a sick old man begging for a postponement of his death. Note the parts in bold:

'10 Do you show your wonders to the dead?
Do those who are dead rise up and praise you?
Selah

11 Is your love declared in the grave,
your faithfulness in Destruction [d] ?

12 Are your wonders known in the place of darkness,
or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?'

Effectively saying, "How can I worship you if I'm dead?" Sheol is apart from God and nobody worships him there.

I'd like to highlight a few verses of my own, if I may.
"I am counted among those who go down to the pit;
I am like a man without strength.

5 I am set apart with the dead,
like the slain who lie in the grave,
whom you remember no more,
who are cut off from your care. "

If the writer of this Pslam is going down among those to "the pit", it implies there is only one pit that people are going to after they die, and if it just meant grave, then there is a problem because certainly there is more than just one physical grave in the world, so this has to be referring to one specific type of environment that people go to after death. And if the Psalmist is set apart with the dead like the slain who lie in the grave, then if they are all being remembered no more and are cut off from God's care, that doesn't simply sound like no longer existing because if they were simply no longer existing it would, once again, run into the whole we exist forever thing, and why would God not remember people even if they could stop existing? Whereas, if it was an eternal punishment they were heading to, it would fit, because God would no longer care about such people, and wouldn't need to remember them anymore, because they are being separated from Him for eternity in Hell. Whereas it doesn't work the same if they just go to sleep forever or something, they wouldn't actually be being punished, they couldn't be aware for it.

I seem to remember Moses disuading God from raining fire and brimstone on some of the Israelites using the same logic but I'm afraid I can't remember the reference at the moment.

I think I remember what your talking about, Moses had to intercede when God said He had decided to destroy all the Israelites over the golden calf incident, so he begged God to forgive the Israelites, and God showed compassion, except for the groups of Israelites who would not rally to Moses's side when he came back down from the mountain because worshipping the golden calf had made them all go wild, so only the Levites were saved because only they rallied when Moses called upon everyone to come and be for the Lord. Exodus 32 should be the verses your thinking of.

Right, last one:



It is interesting to note that 'Death and Destruction' in this context are interchangable with the words 'Sheol and Abaddon'. Abaddon was the angel of destruction and so this proverb simply seems to back up the Hebrew belief of divine retribution in this lifetime.

That footnote seemed a bit interesting to me too, I didn't actually know what Abaddon meant, but the book of proverbs can be a bit poetical at times, (That doesn't mean it doesn't have any actual points in it however) this verse shouldn't be needed to prove that Hell exists anyway. Besides, the Bible says that even the wicked may prosper on earth while the good (relatively of course) may suffer, but in Jeremiah 12, Jeremiah notes this and God responds that he will get them in time, but then give them compassion if they swear by the Lord, while compleatly destroying any nation that will not still come to the Lord, even after having their nation uprooted by God. If they didn't come to God after having their whole nation uprooted by Him, it seems to me they'd probably never come no matter what.


Can you think of any statement that would meet universal agreement?
I could ask everyone if they have ever sinned, everyone would have to answer yes, if they don't at first then that probably means they don't know the definition, and i'd have to define it, and they'd all have to answer yes anyway...unless their like trying to just run away from me or something at this point, or lie like I said. Yea, there's comatose people to take into consideration and all that, but if people with those types of situations wern't comatose or otherwise incapacitated, I dont see why they wouldn't agree as well.

Most your post was your usual "If I write a lot, maybe they won't notice its all just the same flawed assumptions", but I think the above needs to be responded to specifically.

Do you understand that your above statement is equivalent to saying that anybody who doesn't believe in Christ has no common sense?

You don't have gusto, you have bigotry.

A harsh charge, thought it could be harsher. Technically speaking, its much worse sounding than the way you put it, the Bible says that all those who say that there is no God (And since Christ is God, saying that Christ is not God is denying God) are fools. quite literally, it uses the word fools. However, I dought that simply repeating that verse over and over is going to convince anyone here to become a Christian, which is why I don't plan to use it in evangelism. I'd like to also know how exactly is this bigotry, can you cite any verses which take my arguments down to the cleaners so to speak?

Actually more than that. There is another oddity in there.

and common sense enough to know that belief in Christ is needed to recieve salvation of sins due to His perfection and act of atonement for us all, and then gusto enough to go for it and surrender myself to Christ.

Not that Christ is needed but a belief in Christ. In otherwords one must convince themself of Christ in order to avoid hell. This has some real implications. Such as those who do not see the supposed evidince of Christ as convincing. Those people are doomed less they can some how push doubt out of their mind. Seems to me what he's saying is those who do not abandon their minds will burn and those who have enough common sense to abandon thier minds and uncriticaly accept Christ will get rewarded.
It's not a matter of believing Christ existed, its a matter of believing in Christ, there's a difference. Simply acknowladging Christ's existance isn't going to save you, you've got to trust in Him compleatly with absolute faith. You also seem to be equating doubt with the mind, the mind is not one big squishy grey mass of doubt, otherwise, nobody would acknowladge that they even exist, and humanity couldn't of gotten past the first few days of existance through doubt that thirst and hunger was real. And by saying "somehow push the doubt out..." you seem to be implying that this is some herculean task, it's only as hard as you make it be, your the one creating the doubt in the first place.

It's not a matter of believing Christ existed, its a matter of believing in Christ, there's a difference. Simply acknowladging Christ's existance isn't going to save you, you've got to trust in Him compleatly with absolute faith. You also seem to be equating doubt with the mind, the mind is not one big squishy grey mass of doubt, otherwise, nobody would acknowladge that they even exist, and humanity couldn't of gotten past the first few days of existance through doubt that thirst and hunger was real. And by saying "somehow push the doubt out..." you seem to be implying that this is some herculean task, it's only as hard as you make it be, your the one creating the doubt in the first place.
Things are not that black and white, not "doubt" or "no doubt". The ease with which one can push doubt away on a particular issue depends (or should depend) on the amount of evidence : the evidence that one is hungry, and that the hunger will get worse without food, is overwhelming, and it would be a herculean task to introduce doubt.

Looked at objectively, the reliable evidence that Jesus even existed is questionable, and the evidence that he was a miracle-working resurrected Son of God is non-existant. Therefore, it ought to be a herculean task to push the doubts away (and the moment you start pushing doubts away instead of resolving them, you're engaging in an act of dishonest self-deception). Unfortunately, in our religious culture, many people's minds are moulded from an early age to think that it's sensible to ignore evidence and logic when they want to believe something, so many don't seriously raise the questions which would cause doubt in the first place.

I'm curious, if you believe your philosophy is superior, then why do you have to be so noisy about it?
There ya go! Winning the argument by saying 'don't raise your voice'.Works every time.;)

It's not a matter of believing Christ existed, its a matter of believing in Christ, there's a difference. Simply acknowladging Christ's existance isn't going to save you, you've got to trust in Him compleatly with absolute faith. You also seem to be equating doubt with the mind, the mind is not one big squishy grey mass of doubt, otherwise, nobody would acknowladge that they even exist, and humanity couldn't of gotten past the first few days of existance through doubt that thirst and hunger was real. And by saying "somehow push the doubt out..." you seem to be implying that this is some herculean task, it's only as hard as you make it be, your the one creating the doubt in the first place.
Oh my Dog!

Are you quite serious then?

Here's a little exercise for you, my friend: try convincing yourself completely & utterly that I am a 300ft Space-Pirate squirrel.

If you claim you're able to do that, you're either insane or lying. If not, well.. See the problem for us ungodly heathens?

It sounds like if you thought Jesus was merely an avatar and that God was a tribal deity, you couldn't of actually been refusing the real light anyway :/. The thing is, anyone who doesn't know God and knows just a couple limited things about the Bible can scream and rant against God until the day is over, but they might as well be talking to a rock, because if they don't actually know who God is yet try to curse Him anyway, their just cursing a god that doesn't actually exist except in their own mind, and therefore they can't be cursing God. I'll type more about the unforgiveable sin on your next paragraph, but on the not feeling guilt thing, you've still got to have a concience, im not saying that you're lying to me or anything, because of course people can spend the time unfortunently to suppress what their concience tries to say so much that they can't even feel the guilt starting. But you've still got to have a concience nonetheless, just one that's....really suppressed. May I ask, when was the last time you felt guilt over something?

First and foremost, allow me to say that my views have changed since I turned my back. I know, I know, you're going to constantly fall back to your arguments that I couldn't have REALLY known God cause if I did I'd never have turned away. Whatever, use your built in denial all you please, but don't presume to know more about me and my spiritual experiances that I myself know. I know more than limited things about the bible, I was a Christian for a significant period of my life and I studied religion extensively as an undergraduate.

Jesus was an avatar. He was the bodily incarnation of the Christian God on Earth. Thats the definition of an avatar. Yes, there are some theological fine points which make Jesus differ slightly, but the basic concept is the same.

As for guilt, I still feel guilt, just not in the Christian sense. There is nothing intrinsic in my being that makes me feel bad about saying "Jesus fucking christ on a pogo stick" when I stub my toe. I have a different ethical and moral system than Christianity. My morality is not based on the the commandments. I would thank you to not assume that the core of my being is predicated on suppression simply because it differs from your own. There are things I have done that I regret, things that have happened even over the past week that make me feel guilt, but the guilt does not flow from commandment breaking, it flows from me regretting that I violated my own feelings of right and wrong. Your God doesn't factor in.

It's not that I find it hard to imagine, it's just that to truly do it would require such an obscene amount of hatred and evil in one's heart against all that is good and kind, and I find it hard to believe such a person would be calmly responding to me about Christianity on a forum for a game, even if this is technically the general forum.
<snip longwinded denial-based definition of apostasy>
And your telling me you fully acknowladged that God wanted to save you, that He loves you, and even while seeing that God wants to save you through love, not tyranny, (If you think God is looking to save souls through tyranny, even if you believe it steadfastly, it doesn't make God's nature change.) that you still denied Him and basically equated Him to satan? It's a pretty tall order of hate to commit blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, this goes way beyond the hate that allows people to commit genocide and murder and racism and so on. Oh, and I nearly missed it in your paragraph, but God tells us that no man is truly good, so there isn't a good man who won't bow anywhere, because there are no good men besides Christ, who was also God anyway, and certainly didn't call Himself satan anyway.

Look, we can do this dance forever. Lets put it this way, as clearly as I can. I came to the conclusion that even if everything in the bible were factually true, even if all doubt in my mind were erased, even if God came down bodily from heaven to show me all of the mistakes I had made, I would not bow. I would rather burn than submit to the God who created this world. At the time I made that discision I was a Christian and I did not underestimate what I was turning my back on. Over time I have examined my lost faith, I have looked at Christianity, and I have found it lacking. I am no longer a beliver and thus I have no problems looking at the faults in that faith. Still, from where I stand today, yeah, I don't see God as the hero of the bible. I value my Will, I value my individuality, and I hold the first individual in far higher esteem than the creator in your mythos. Still, I see them both as symbols.

This isn't the thread for theology, though, and I really think it would be a bit of a lost cause to explain what I believe and why. I am not an evangelical, and my religion does not seek converts. If you want to understand what I believe, I direct you to read The Book of the Law, thats a good start. If you're still interested in a debate after that you can always send me a telegram or make a new thread. I'll keep my eyes peeled.

Also, just for the record when you said:
It's a pretty tall order of hate to commit blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, this goes way beyond the hate that allows people to commit genocide and murder and racism and so on.
I vomited in my mouth just a little bit. That perception encapsulates everything that is wrong with Christianity. Start a rape camp and murder all the men of a society because you are so hateful that you no longer view the people as human, thats bad, but God can forgive it if you understand what you did wrong. Look at the glory of God and turn away, well, thats just unacceptable. How can you honestly say that a philosophy which views the orchestration of the rape and murder of millions to be less hateful than refusing to bow? How can disobediance be less evil than that? Do you see how any horror is justified by that kind of philosophy. THAT is what has allowed the violence of Christian history. The demonization of anyone who disagrees. When fighting ultimate evil you can justify anything to yourself.

Look at what you said and then tell me that it shocks you that the thought of your God fills me with anything other than hatred.
<snip explaination about violence and numbers>

Again, you've missed the point. Fine.

Oh, and could you cite the source for your claim that muslim extremists kill more people every six months than died in all of the Spanish inquisition?

Neither history nor heritage change anything about what Christ said, just because a very large amount of people totally abused or ignored Him and His message to murder or hate (and continue to do so today, some people claiming to be Christians still blow themselves up in or around abortion clinics sometimes, so there's still people murdering for sure) supposedly in His name doesn't mean Christ was wrong, it merely attests to how people can be wrong, murder and violence is the unifying thing of men perhaps, but not of Jesus. You simply cannot take the Bible in context and get the idea that Jesus want's us all to force other people into Christianity by murdering them all until they convert. You can rip the Bible out of context all day long sure, but if you are looking for the Bible to say something and will do anything to imagine it says it, then nothing is forcing you to understand the Bible literally, you can think the Bible means whatever you or anybody else in the world want it to mean, but it won't change what it actually means.

You don't get it, do you? I mean, you just don't see it.
Christianity, to a simple mind, provide a blank check. Christianity has been so abused because they way salvation and absolution are explained, and they way they often work, leave people an opening to do any terrible thing and get away with it as long as they repent. You can argue all you want, but that is the understanding that the vast majority of Christians have had throughout history.

But those extra stages are what is supposed to make people think about God and infinite justice assuming that it is true, not trying to think that it could merely have a chance to be true and to think about that, then everything gets gummed up in semantics like you've pointed it. You can ask people to assume things are compleatly true just for the sake of contemplating something, especially something rooted in ideas about Infinite justice and the like, rather than just saying "God exists....think about it."

Yes but why would anyone care about the potential judgement of a non-existant god?

But then it's just the same, because it would be 1+x=2, and therefore x=2-1, so x=1, and the equation is just 1+1=2 again. Besides, im not trying to change 1+1 to not equal 2, im trying to say that knowing you've done wrong, and assuming God exists and must be perfectly just, then therefore if everything goes logically then God must judge you guilty. But after that, the point to get across is that 1+1 always equals 2, and that 2, as in the guilty judgement against your sins, can instead be forgiven through payment by Christ, rather than you having that 2 end up sending you to Hell. Hell is not supposed to be the objective here :/.

Maybe I should have made myself clearer.

If we accept that from the Christian perspective we have all sinned then we can represent that as a fixed variable: '1'.

'Y=2' if the person is going to hell, however, for them to go to hell god must exist.

'x' represents the existance of god, if he exists then it is '1', if he doesn't then it is '0'.

So 1+x=y represents the potential danger of being judged.

No, I think I said "It's not supposed to be complicated or bringing people down to a choice of looking at probabilities and weighing the risks.", there's a "not" in there, im saying it's not supposed to be complicated or about getting people to weigh the risks.

Apologies, I misread your post.

It's just I thought I could head something off was all and get to explain some more Biblical stuff I hadn't discussed before to boot :). I think i've explained the other half in my other explanations above already though about probability wagering.

Well to convert somebody to Christianity you not only have to convince them of the existance of a supreme being, you must also convince them that it is the Christian god.

Ah, now you bring up something else that can be very interesting to discuss, just who's standards are you getting that definition of true justice from? Since we truly can only see sin in a finite manner and God can see it with infinite justice, how can the two systems of man's justice and God's justice hope to compare? Also, if Allah really is infinitly merciful, why does the Qu'ran say that if the balance of good works doesn't outweigh the bad one's, you go to Hell? The thing is, the Qu'ran wasn't written in ancient Hebrew because that language was pretty much gone by that time, it was probably written in Arabic, so I don't know about the Arabic word for "Hell", but I don't see how you'd get the same problems over "sheol" with it, and therefore, the Qu'ran clearly states Allah apparently does not forgive all if your works aren't in your favor, and you supposedly get a seat in hell for this. And also, i'd like to bring up something else if I may, to us humans down here, other people might seem good or bad to us, but to God, everyone is bad because God's infinite justice must apply a perfect standard to us, and the Bible says that we are all born into sin and that no man is truly good...except Jesus of course, but He was also God anyway. Because no man is good, this is why Christ had to come, it wasn't a matter of us mostly not being able to overcome an evil deficit and God sending a few people to Hell anyway who were good, it was a matter of we can't possibly do a single thing to save ourselves simply by our own actions because everyone has already failed to meet the mark.

As I understand it in Islam hell isn't eternal except for idolators and those who worship 'false gods', everyone else will be forgiven in time due to the omnibenevolence of Allah.

I'm not quite sure why you're bringing Sheol into this, the Islamic hell is called Jahannam if you're interested.

Saying that we are born as sinners is opening a can of worms really, how can someone be guilty of a crime if they never had a choice in whether they commited it? It is that kind of belief that would prevent me from becoming a Christian even if I did believe in god.

Yes, I see the pattern, but there's more to it, the Greek religion didn't just say Hades was just a bunch of flames, there was a river where souls were literally drowing in for all eternity or something, and in many books of Greek mythology like Oedipus it is also described as a multi-tiered sort of system where there are also plains that souls go to to suck the blood out of sheep or something. The Greeks, of course, could of added in the plains thing from the harsh plainslands around their area, and of course could of gotten more inspiration from the mediterranian, but then, why would the Hebrew's not get inspiration for Hell from the mediterranian when they eventually reached the Promised Land, and why not get inspiration from the desert they lost many lives from to make a Hell myth of their own? On the other hand, assuming God really was there and was causing all those death's Himself out of judgements against extremely awfully acting people, and was actually trying to describe a literal Hell to His people in the Torah and through prophets which had nothing to do with deserts or oceans and more to do with eternal fire, darkness, forgetfulness, and a permanent state of separation from God, then it seems to me the Jewish religion would be more in line with....well....something like the Bible.

But he doesn't describe a literal hell, the most you've is a few vague quotes which could possibly be describing hell but could easily be describing something else. You would have thought that God would be a little more open about it, something along the line of "Oh by the way guys, if you're bad there's an eternal firepit waiting for you when you die.", instead, if we assume that hell does exist, the best he does is drop the occaissonal hint which could easily be misinterpretted. It's a bit like a girl who assumes that you can read her mind perfectly after going out with her for two weeks.

Why of course, even in today's society, we are generally taught to forget scary things like Hell and just enjoy life and freedom to the fullest, after all, many people seem to believe it is proven we evolved from chimpanzees, and you don't see chimpanzees trying to be Christians to flee from the wrath to come, you see them enjoying themselves whenever possible as wild animals. The religions that often corrupted the Israelites often had very similar philosophies back when they kept forgetting about Hell and God in OT times. Think about it, Christianity was the dominent religion of much of the world for a good long time (At least, it was supposed to be Christianity...but that's a whole other can of worms) and most definently did teach that Hell was a reality,(Assuming people were teaching it Biblically) yet somehow, just in recent times, as people have decided not to be Christians in much larger numbers apparently, much of society must of forgotten compleatly about Hell, because I sure don't see people running around in mass panic from not being saved and having to think about Hell waiting for them all the time. If people didn't forget Hell, they would always be wanting to be saved, so everyone would want to respond to the Gospel to be saved. But of course, many people express very little interest these days in being saved, so it appears to me at least that everyone has either forgotten about Hell or is purposefully forgetting it to enjoy their lives while they still are alive.

You are confusing the meaning of 'forget' here, you are using 'forget' to mean 'to lose belief in' rather than 'to lose knowledge of a thing'. I understand the concept of hell but I reject any factual basis for it. People haven't forgotten the meaning of hell, they are simply rejecting it in the same way that they have rejected heliocentrism but still understand the concept. In the same way even if the Hebrews stopped believing in hell they would still understand the meaning of it, and as hell would have been a central tenet of their religion they wouldn't have rejected it.

On a side note nobody has ever claimed that we evolved from chimpanzees, we both evolved from a common ancestor. I'm afraid evolution has fossil records on its side.

8 the ransom for a life is costly,
no payment is ever enough-

9 that he should live on forever
and not see decay.

It seems to me if one is dead and just sits there in the grave that they can't actually "see" themselves decaying, if that's how the lives of those who were unsaved ended, they'd just stop existing so to speak, and the Bible says God created our souls to exist eternally, they can't simply just stop existing. However, if someone went to heaven, then this verse says they wouldn't see decay, but if they do not gain eternal life in heaven, they get eternal death in hell, where everything is decaying and dead and bad and...yea, it's not a nice place.

'No payment is ever enough that he should live on forever and not see decay'; it never says that they can see the decay, it says that money can't buy eternal life. There is no mention of hell here.

But the Bible only mentions either heavenly or hell-ish places, no reference to anything in between or on the side is ever really presented as the eternal fate of man, and you would think if God sent His only and perfect Son to die on the cross for all our sins, you'd think He would be trying to save us from something that He felt was worth sacrificng His own Son for. Heaven isn't shadowy, dark, disorderly, or gloomy like in this verse, and that means Hell must be what is being referred to here.

The New Testament only mentions Heaven and Hell, we're talking about the Old Testament. This link (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=614&letter=S&search=sheol) contains plenty of Old Testament references to Sheol.

Ah but here's the thing, remember that God made our souls so that they last for eternity, so since it would be going to destruction those souls can't possibly really be destroyed, so such destruction has to be eternally on-going, the sort of thing you only get from definitions of Hell. It's true, Job could of been going on about earthly punishment, but if you look farther down to verse 14, Job says, "what will I do when God confronts me?
What will I answer when called to account?".
Being called to account is very similar to the Judgement day described in the New Testiment referring to a day in which God will judge all mankind, so if God is calling people to account in some form back in time here, then it must mean that the Israelties understood that God must judge everyone's sins, and therefore render a decision of innocent or guilty, and those who are guilty and have not had their sins payed for can't simply stop existing because it would violate the nature of something God created to exist forever, so those souls can only go to Hell if God render's an infinitly just decision.

No, you're still thinking in terms of the New Testament. In the Old Testament when god judged someone he dealt out punishment in this world which is why all of the punishments from god that Job invites are in this world. The confrontation that he fears is presumably also in this world. Also, destruction doesn't have to be permanent, they are destroyed in this world and then descend to Sheol or simply the grave depending on how you translate it, you are trying to force Christian views onto Jewish tradition.

"I am counted among those who go down to the pit;
I am like a man without strength.

5 I am set apart with the dead,
like the slain who lie in the grave,
whom you remember no more,
who are cut off from your care. "

If the writer of this Pslam is going down among those to "the pit", it implies there is only one pit that people are going to after they die, and if it just meant grave, then there is a problem because certainly there is more than just one physical grave in the world, so this has to be referring to one specific type of environment that people go to after death. And if the Psalmist is set apart with the dead like the slain who lie in the grave, then if they are all being remembered no more and are cut off from God's care, that doesn't simply sound like no longer existing because if they were simply no longer existing it would, once again, run into the whole we exist forever thing, and why would God not remember people even if they could stop existing? Whereas, if it was an eternal punishment they were heading to, it would fit, because God would no longer care about such people, and wouldn't need to remember them anymore, because they are being separated from Him for eternity in Hell. Whereas it doesn't work the same if they just go to sleep forever or something, they wouldn't actually be being punished, they couldn't be aware for it.

He is fearing physical death. Obviously pit it doesn't mean one grave, it could mean either Sheol or just death.

Oh, and Sheol would fit with the concept of separation from god, it was viewed as being the furthest point from heaven.

I think I remember what your talking about, Moses had to intercede when God said He had decided to destroy all the Israelites over the golden calf incident, so he begged God to forgive the Israelites, and God showed compassion, except for the groups of Israelites who would not rally to Moses's side when he came back down from the mountain because worshipping the golden calf had made them all go wild, so only the Levites were saved because only they rallied when Moses called upon everyone to come and be for the Lord. Exodus 32 should be the verses your thinking of.

Thanks.

That footnote seemed a bit interesting to me too, I didn't actually know what Abaddon meant, but the book of proverbs can be a bit poetical at times, (That doesn't mean it doesn't have any actual points in it however) this verse shouldn't be needed to prove that Hell exists anyway. Besides, the Bible says that even the wicked may prosper on earth while the good (relatively of course) may suffer, but in Jeremiah 12, Jeremiah notes this and God responds that he will get them in time, but then give them compassion if they swear by the Lord, while compleatly destroying any nation that will not still come to the Lord, even after having their nation uprooted by God. If they didn't come to God after having their whole nation uprooted by Him, it seems to me they'd probably never come no matter what.

I'm not interested in proving that hell exists because you can't, I'm interested in you proving that the Hebrews actually had a concept of hell.

I could ask everyone if they have ever sinned, everyone would have to answer yes, if they don't at first then that probably means they don't know the definition, and i'd have to define it, and they'd all have to answer yes anyway...unless their like trying to just run away from me or something at this point, or lie like I said. Yea, there's comatose people to take into consideration and all that, but if people with those types of situations wern't comatose or otherwise incapacitated, I dont see why they wouldn't agree as well.

I was actually refering to moral statements such as 'abortion is wrong' or 'giving to charity is good' as you founded universal moral truths on the idea that everyone has knowledge of them and it is not merely inate to the culture.

Kinda like how most republicans are shouting "Liberals are too busy shouting "You're stupid!!!!" to notice!" to notice most don't? ;)
Can i get a witness?

*cheers and tongues*
*wave*

I'd like to also know how exactly is this bigotry, can you cite any verses which take my arguments down to the cleaners so to speak?

You made a statement that people who don't believe as you do have no common sense. That's a false generalization implying a negative characteristic. That's bigotry.

I don't have to site verses, I just have to point out what you yourself have said. The most conclusive evidence of your bigotry is your own posting.

You made a statement that people who don't believe as you do have no common sense. That's a false generalization implying a negative characteristic. That's bigotry.

I don't have to site verses, I just have to point out what you yourself have said. The most conclusive evidence of your bigotry is your own posting.
Pwned. :D

Thank You Theorb for hanging in there so long.


I myself am a militant atheist. I considered what a great thing it would be to put a road side billboard up with Adam, Eve, Steve ( Billy Goat with a big grin ), talking sake, leprichons, fairies, the tooth fairy, santa cluase, and the easter bunny. I percieve the world world be a better place without Christianity and it's ignorant teachings.


Again thanks for taking the time to respond.

Not to be difficult, but whenever I hear an assertion like that, I have to ask, which battery did you take?
Well, I've taken the one at Children's Hospital to test me for a learning disability, and I took another one three years ago, not sure which one it was though. Also I should have been specific... thats my verbal IQ, my mathematical IQ is 128. So, all in all, I average somewhere in between 132-138. I scored like 90 in some areas. One such catagory that I scored 90 in was sequencing. I also have moderate ADD.

One such catagory that I scored 90 in was sequencing. I also have moderate ADD.
Strange how common that situation is becoming ... (no sarcasm) I know many people who are in a similar situation.
Although i've never been diagnosed for ADD, i can honestly say i'm not as focused at times as i would prefer to be. I do however, on certain occasion, much prefer the volatility of my intellect since it's nice to be pleasantly surprised - cases of spontaneity and lucid dreaming. Other times/situations i'm dumb as a rock ... as Steven Wright put it ... i'm a peripheral visionary.
And that i guess is all the more reinforcement for my earlier statement ... my IQ is:
Sporadic and dangerously inconsistent.

Strange how common that situation is becoming ... (no sarcasm) I know many people who are in a similar situation.
Although i've never been diagnosed for ADD, i can honestly say i'm not as focused at times as i would prefer to be. I do however, on certain occasion, much prefer the volatility of my intellect since it's nice to be pleasantly surprised - cases of spontaneity and lucid dreaming. Other times/situations i'm dumb as a rock ... as Steven Wright put it ... i'm a peripheral visionary.
And that i guess is all the more reinforcement for my earlier statement ... my IQ is:
Sporadic and dangerously inconsistent.
I've been clinically diagnosed with ADD. As early as age 4. And it was thought that I might have it before then.

Also, About my musical talent, I made All Eastern back in Septemeber/October, and will be performing at Carnegie Hall this coming Wednesday.

I've been clinically diagnosed with ADD. As early as age 4. And it was thought that I might have it before then.
You must be a tad younger than m'self then ... that wasn't vernacular at the time in my circumstance.
And music ... for what instrument?
I went to All-Northwest Choir in '90 or '91 with one other dude from my school, and i met people who were much more devoted and capable than myself. It was pretty inspiring though.
And in less than a month my band is playing for the Arctic Winter Games.
Good luck with Carnegie, hope it's what you want and are ready for!

You must be a tad younger than m'self then ... that wasn't vernacular at the time in my circumstance.
Yeah I'm 15.
And music ... for what instrument?
I went to All-Northwest Choir in '90 or '91 with one other dude from my school, and i met people who were much more devoted and capable than myself. It was pretty inspiring though.
And in less than a month my band is playing for the Arctic Winter Games.
Good luck with Carnegie, hope it's what you want and are ready for!
I sing!:D Yeah I know I'm definitely not going to be the best there, but I was one of five people that got selected from Maryland. I'll be going with one of the seniors in Madrigals at my school, she made Senior, I'm in Junior. Good luck, I hope you enjoy it. Thanks, I'll need it, as I have one song that I barely know, and very limited time to practice.

Yeah I'm 15.

I sing!:D Yeah I know I'm definitely not going to be the best there, but I was one of five people that got selected from Maryland. I'll be going with one of the seniors in Madrigals at my school, she made Senior, I'm in Junior. Good luck, I hope you enjoy it. Thanks, I'll need it, as I have one song that I barely know, and very limited time to practice.
Yep, my Achilles' Heel was "Cindy" .... i blurted on a rest. Damn it can be loud in certain venues ... :D
I'm glad i didn't solo, although "Il Gondoliere" had been recommended to me, as was some german tune i can't remember. Good by their own right, but i've settled into other things since ... past operatic, i've focused on tone and kept most of my range. I wasn't ready at the time, and the first time i did solo, my heart pinched a sec with nervousness. It was funny then too, i think.
Good luck with it though. *bows*

Well, I've taken the one at Children's Hospital to test me for a learning disability, and I took another one three years ago, not sure which one it was though. Also I should have been specific... thats my verbal IQ, my mathematical IQ is 128. So, all in all, I average somewhere in between 132-138. I scored like 90 in some areas. One such catagory that I scored 90 in was sequencing. I also have moderate ADD.

Fair enough.

Thank You Theorb for hanging in there so long.


I myself am a militant atheist. I considered what a great thing it would be to put a road side billboard up with Adam, Eve, Steve ( Billy Goat with a big grin ), talking sake, leprichons, fairies, the tooth fairy, santa cluase, and the easter bunny. I percieve the world world be a better place without Christianity and it's ignorant teachings.


Again thanks for taking the time to respond.

Your welcome. The only thing i've got a problem with is that now I think I have to answer like 6 or 7 things in a row now because I think I missed one of Curie's posts in answering the others and I think there's several one's from Curie alone still to answer, I guess I could lump them all together I suppose, this really does take me hours to answer everyone at once since I always try to check everything :/.

Things are not that black and white, not "doubt" or "no doubt". The ease with which one can push doubt away on a particular issue depends (or should depend) on the amount of evidence : the evidence that one is hungry, and that the hunger will get worse without food, is overwhelming, and it would be a herculean task to introduce doubt.

Looked at objectively, the reliable evidence that Jesus even existed is questionable, and the evidence that he was a miracle-working resurrected Son of God is non-existant. Therefore, it ought to be a herculean task to push the doubts away (and the moment you start pushing doubts away instead of resolving them, you're engaging in an act of dishonest self-deception). Unfortunately, in our religious culture, many people's minds are moulded from an early age to think that it's sensible to ignore evidence and logic when they want to believe something, so many don't seriously raise the questions which would cause doubt in the first place.

But I didn't come to Christ because someone simply told me Jesus's existance was fact and I trusted it, I came to Christ because our church seemed to steadfastly assert that belief in Christ made one see His glory, so I decided to test this idea of faith in Christ to see if it was true, I had gone to church for a long time, maybe they had a point to all this stuff after all. Admittedly, one could argue that my 11 year old self might of been too impressionable, but at any rate, I do indeed remember that I could quite clearly see Christ so to speak when I gave my heart over to Him. Yea, technically speaking, im not entirely certain if I was really born again because, well, I didn't act born again much for years afterward, and I can't actually remember if I really totally surrendered or held back some. (Though I sure felt different...I just can't remember exactly how, it was a long time ago, but it did impact me for sure.) The outward evidence of my salvation might of been not there at first because nobody really taught me much to anything about the Bible, what Jesus said about how we should obey Him, etc. etc., but if I wasn't born again then, I am now at any rate, and the claim is still true. I didn't have to push out doubt permanently at all, I simply put it aside for the moment to test an idea, saw that my doubt was pointless the whole time when the claims were proven as fact, and could dismiss the doubt forever since it was proven baseless. I do remember thinking it was actually extremely simple to turn to Christ when I thought it would be harder somehow, I don't think I could understand why I didn't believe in Christ before, but then, I can't exactly remember what I was thinking anyway, it was, like I said, a long time ago :/.

First and foremost, allow me to say that my views have changed since I turned my back. I know, I know, you're going to constantly fall back to your arguments that I couldn't have REALLY known God cause if I did I'd never have turned away. Whatever, use your built in denial all you please, but don't presume to know more about me and my spiritual experiances that I myself know. I know more than limited things about the bible, I was a Christian for a significant period of my life and I studied religion extensively as an undergraduate.

But you said that God was merely a tribal deity, and that's not what the Bible says God is, you couldn't just judge God to be a tiny and trivial being and expect to be actually blasphemying Him.

Jesus was an avatar. He was the bodily incarnation of the Christian God on Earth. Thats the definition of an avatar. Yes, there are some theological fine points which make Jesus differ slightly, but the basic concept is the same.

As for guilt, I still feel guilt, just not in the Christian sense. There is nothing intrinsic in my being that makes me feel bad about saying "Jesus fucking christ on a pogo stick" when I stub my toe. I have a different ethical and moral system than Christianity. My morality is not based on the the commandments. I would thank you to not assume that the core of my being is predicated on suppression simply because it differs from your own. There are things I have done that I regret, things that have happened even over the past week that make me feel guilt, but the guilt does not flow from commandment breaking, it flows from me regretting that I violated my own feelings of right and wrong. Your God doesn't factor in.

But during the period you considered yourself a Christian, what was your ethical and moral system? Did God factor in for you then, or was there more to it for you?

Look, we can do this dance forever. Lets put it this way, as clearly as I can. I came to the conclusion that even if everything in the bible were factually true, even if all doubt in my mind were erased, even if God came down bodily from heaven to show me all of the mistakes I had made, I would not bow. I would rather burn than submit to the God who created this world. At the time I made that discision I was a Christian and I did not underestimate what I was turning my back on. Over time I have examined my lost faith, I have looked at Christianity, and I have found it lacking. I am no longer a beliver and thus I have no problems looking at the faults in that faith. Still, from where I stand today, yeah, I don't see God as the hero of the bible. I value my Will, I value my individuality, and I hold the first individual in far higher esteem than the creator in your mythos. Still, I see them both as symbols.

But God isn't just threatening to burninate us forever and leaving it at that because He can show us all our mistakes, He was also Christ, who was not saving us for tyranical reasons, He was saving us because He loved us. Most of your posts seem to be ignoring Christ's sacrifice as an act of love or otherwise altogether, so I simply can't just look at this and say that you probably commited blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, because as far as I know, the God you are opposing doesn't exist.

This isn't the thread for theology, though, and I really think it would be a bit of a lost cause to explain what I believe and why. I am not an evangelical, and my religion does not seek converts. If you want to understand what I believe, I direct you to read The Book of the Law, thats a good start. If you're still interested in a debate after that you can always send me a telegram or make a new thread. I'll keep my eyes peeled.

I've already heard of it, as I understand it, the general essense is "Do what you will shall be the whole of the Law?"

Also, just for the record when you said:

I vomited in my mouth just a little bit. That perception encapsulates everything that is wrong with Christianity. Start a rape camp and murder all the men of a society because you are so hateful that you no longer view the people as human, thats bad, but God can forgive it if you understand what you did wrong. Look at the glory of God and turn away, well, thats just unacceptable. How can you honestly say that a philosophy which views the orchestration of the rape and murder of millions to be less hateful than refusing to bow? How can disobediance be less evil than that? Do you see how any horror is justified by that kind of philosophy. THAT is what has allowed the violence of Christian history. The demonization of anyone who disagrees. When fighting ultimate evil you can justify anything to yourself.

Look at what you said and then tell me that it shocks you that the thought of your God fills me with anything other than hatred.

This is why I cannot simply conclude that you commited the unforgiveable Sin, you continue to simply relegate your dislike of God together with the idea of God merely being some tyrant who demands everyone bow because it gives him jollies or something, and this un-Biblical idea is why I am reluctant to think that you've really known God in the first place. Like i've said, it isn't simply deciding not to bow to God for any reason, you've got to fully realize that God is a perfect being of goodness and that nothing you can do can change that because it is against His nature to not be a being of goodness, and still compare Him to satan, if you can't see how it's such a horrible thing, I don't see how I can see that you even knew how great God really was in the first place. Nextly, I think it's safe to say that most people who have commited mass genocides, rapes, or have created torture chambers and the like honestly probably didn't care increadibly about what they were doing, and it's seriously doubtful that they really knew anything about God or considered that the God of the Bible exists and will judge them when they die if they do not accept Christ. But despite the horrors inflicted upon people in genocide, rape, or torture, it simply put has to end eventually, the person will die, and then it just plain ends, I know it seems a bit too simple for something as bad as genocide and torture, but when your eternal soul exists forever, the time spent being tortured just can't compare at a certain point. But calling God the same as satan, despite knowing full well who God is and everything about Him, that kind of attack on God lasts forever, because if you've called him the same as satan then, there's nothing left that can change your mind. And I don't know if I just can't get this point across or what, but the God you are posting about doesn't exist, because He is not a tyrant despite how many times you say that word and equate His actions with a tyrant, that is why I can't consider the idea you've commited the unforgivable sin. If He was a tyrant, then why would He show mercy on mankind and give everyone a chance to recieve eternal life, that seems very un-dictator like.


Again, you've missed the point. Fine.

Oh, and could you cite the source for your claim that muslim extremists kill more people every six months than died in all of the Spanish inquisition?

Apparently I got mixed up, it was actually every year more are killed not six months, sorry :/. I thought I put in the hyperlink, but here it is, it's actually a pretty long article: http://www.crisismagazine.com/october2003/madden.htm and the site making the claim cited this, it is: http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/ you'll have to scroll down pass the picture of Islamic people burying a woman alive to stone her and it's in that box that says "Put the numbers in perspective".
The crisismagazine article says that in the entire 350 year Spanish Inquistion, only about 4,000 people got killed.


You don't get it, do you? I mean, you just don't see it.
Christianity, to a simple mind, provide a blank check. Christianity has been so abused because they way salvation and absolution are explained, and they way they often work, leave people an opening to do any terrible thing and get away with it as long as they repent. You can argue all you want, but that is the understanding that the vast majority of Christians have had throughout history.
Generally, that understanding would require looking at the Bible through a more flexibly-tinted lense, I don't have or want anything to do with that, im sticking with what Jesus literally told us to do, and it is not open for me to just do whatever I please as long as I repent, because if I just do what I please and repent, it's probably because im not actually sorry for doing wrong at all. And if people look at Christ so cheaply as to think that they should just do bad things now and repent later, I don't think it's too unreasonable to suppose they probably didn't really get what Jesus was saying in the first place. If they thought of repentence that cheaply, it also seems likely to me that many of them probably wern't even Christian, belonging in the church does not make one a Christian....at least by Biblical standards.

Wrong judgment of self is deemed to be needed according to you.

Hmm does the next statement apply?



Sounds like a poisen pill for guilt to me.

I'd re-evaluate the first people to walk the planet, the talking snakes, the people living in fish, the tower of babble, and the piller of salt fairy tales if I where you. Seems like a nice and easy way to put away the bondage you put yourself in by agreeing to uncriticly accept fairy tales.

Short lie detection methodology. If it sounds to good to be true ( ie The Bible and many con schemes ) it probly is . If the fish is to dang big to be real ( ie The Bible and many con schemes ) it probly isn't real. If some one tells you something they have no means by which to know ( ie The Bible and many con schemes )[/I] they probly made it up. [I]

It's a great way to easily dismiss crap without even needing to take the time to investigate.

I think I missed responding to this one, if I'm double posting it, im sorry.

Just as I don't have to judge others and can repeat judgements God has made in the Bible without re-judging, I can also apply God's judgement of everyone to myself. He said we are all born into sin, therefore, I don't have to judge myself for anything, I already know that im guilty by God's standards, a quick self-examination reveals this in no time at all, I can see that i've at least lied, I can see that God considers this to be worthy of being judged guilty, so I know I must be judged by God as being guilty, unless I believe in Christ, since He took that judgement upon Himself for all those who would believe in Him.

Nextly, it is exactly those types of comprimises which lead to failure as a Christian. If I said that Genesis was all fake, then what right do I possibly have to assert that the Bible is real, or even that God is, since without Genesis, you wouldn't know why God must judge the world as all being guilty? And without being able to assert that God is real, I couldn't assert the reality of Christ either, so any attempts at me evangelising while at the same time denying parts of the Bible is ultimately hypocrasy and doomed to me basically failing, unless of course, I just hid the facts of the matter enough to trick people into thinking I believe in the whole Bible. Besides, belief in Genesis or not, I would still be in bondage, its either slavery to Christ, or slavery to sin, and I can assure you slavery to Christ is not merely trading a flawed system of ethics for bondage to a tyrant, this slavery isn't evil in the slightest.

Your detection methodology there is how people can assert untrue things as long as they have a strong opinion on the subject. People who insisted the earth was flat undoubtably had a similar opinion of people who said the earth was round, it sure would sound too good to be true to those groups of people who said the earth was flat, since they thought all sailor dissapearances were the result of people falling off the edge of the earth, what else would they of wanted the explanation to of been? And think of how big an idea the earth being a sphere instead of round would be, all that extra surface area, no risk of falling off the edge, not being able to see over the horizon actually making sense from now on, those would be pretty big changes for people who believed the earth was flat. And after all, how could people who believed the earth was flat think that the people who said it was a sphere could back it up, you couldn't just fly into space and take snapshots then, and who knows how people came up with excuses for not being able to see over the horizon? This methodology can easily be used to deny the truth as long as you have adament enough faith against the other side.

Your welcome. The only thing i've got a problem with is that now I think I have to answer like 6 or 7 things in a row now because I think I missed one of Curie's posts in answering the others and I think there's several one's from Curie alone still to answer, I guess I could lump them all together I suppose, this really does take me hours to answer everyone at once since I always try to check everything :/.

Don't sweat it, I can wait. We're not on any kind of schedule here, take whatever time you need.

To be honest, though, I've noticed you write lengthy posts that don't really give an answer.

EDIT: I looked back over the last dozen pages or so, and I amend my statement to read "You write lengthy posts that give evasively circuitious and untenable answers".

Quick question to the Christians...

Why in the name of (blank) is Greek mythology so darn close to your religion? The parallels are uncanny. The flood myth, for example. The flood was used to purge humanity from evil. Man and woman, both virtuous and true, are granted by the god(s) a chance to live and continue the human race. The journey of the great ocean ends at a great mountain. Ergo, a vengeful god(s) destoyed most of what (s)he created in order to save it, and cover his/her ass, basically. You state it yourselves, all mythology is to be dismissed as untrue and fantasy, used to COMPENSATE for a lack of knowledge about nature. Yet the Bible is true; the word of God is true.

So why are so many parallels draw between mythology (lies), and the Bible (truth?)? I have attempted to ask my teacher (I attend a Christian school, to my slight dismay) and she is not able to answer me with a statement that is valid and believable.

"Now about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do want want you to be ignorant."
~1 Cor. 12:1

Interesting. I've often used world is flat analogy.

You missed one thing Theorb

How does any one record an event that happened before their time? I guess you could try word of mouth passed down through generations but that wouldn't account for the Godlike story telling through out much of the Bible. Godlike story telling is when an event describes all the participants in an events instead of giving the experience of one participant in a event. The story of Adam and Eve isn't told from the perspective of either Adam and Eve the story is told as if God is giving an account. The are many things stated in the Bible for which no one has any means by which to know. The Adam and Eve story is a good example.

Also I think You could bring me from flat earth to globe earth. It might take a hell of a lot but it could be done. To give an example I may need to look out across the ocean and see ships disappear over the hump. I may need some time with a telescope. I may nee to learn about gravity. The complex math involved in calculating orbits etc. etc. I honestly doubt you can take me from slithering snakes to talking snakes.

Think on it does all the stuff you believe honestly make sense to you? Can you do the equivalent of repair work or engineering with the spiritual wisdom you believe you have? Can you add Jesus to the depressed and see hope. Can you add the ten commandments to the depraved and see sympathy? I question psychiatry because I can't see the mechanics of it working. I can take a disfunction car to the car mechanic and come out with a functional car, I can take my computer to a technician and see a improvement. I can take myself to a medical doctor and see myself get better. I can see the science of avionics work whenever a plane or a jet goes up in the air. How am I to know Jesus works? How am I to know Jesus isn't just a placebo effect? If we where to do a blind study of Jesus people and evil atheists would I be able to see the difference between the two groups without having to cheat?

If you didnt put it so calmly id say that was a flame.
Your attacking atheists. Wheres your evidence were loud?
(smirks)

Oh my. Where does one start? Let's just stick with the obvious. My experience on this forum has taught me the following..... Assume someone announces that they are an atheist in a post. It is very, very rare that any Christians will aggressively attack that person unless they also state that all Christians are stupid, or make some other sort of disparaging remarks regarding Christianity. If you get a Christian doing that sort of aggressive vilification, please call them on it. Because if they do that, they aren't really much of a Christian at all. However, if one states that they are a Christian, they usually can count on getting passed around from person to person, called names, and insulted seven different ways to Sunday.

And God help you if you actually state that you are a conservative. Then it really starts to get ugly.

Been there, done that, and bought the t-shirt.

Yes but why would anyone care about the potential judgement of a non-existant god?

Im trying to say that I should get people to think that God does exist, not merely that He could exist, and that He must be infinitly perfect. This of course can take awhile to build up to, depending of course on what the person believes to begin with, but the point is, im not advocating that people merely consider probabilties, im advocating people consider the truth of God existing and being infinitly just, and to consider what that would mean if they were judged by God. The "if" is there because then when they admit that a just God would have to judge them guilty, (That point might require some debate as well for many people) then I can explain about Jesus, and that through belief in Him, the judgement will no longer be inflicted upon you. That's why that "if" is there about judgement, because it is an "if", either God judges you, or God judges Christ instead of you, those are the possibilities that should be presented, not a choice between whether or not God exists at all.

Maybe I should have made myself clearer.

If we accept that from the Christian perspective we have all sinned then we can represent that as a fixed variable: '1'.

'Y=2' if the person is going to hell, however, for them to go to hell god must exist.

'x' represents the existance of god, if he exists then it is '1', if he doesn't then it is '0'.

So 1+x=y represents the potential danger of being judged.

But if x was a 0, then there would be no God to create a heaven or hell or anything for that matter, so y would have to be undefined, with fun things like 1/0, Pi/0, or (Sin^2+Cot^2-Tan) - (Sin+Cos)^2 / (Sin^2+Cos^2)(0). Therefore, without God, we wouldn't be here having this debate, so with God existing due to us having this debate, then x must equal 1, so Y must equal 2. Of course, I really did just come up with this example on the fly to start with, there might be some critical mathematical or theological flaw behind it or something, I'm not very good at making up examples like this on my own, you get what im trying to say though, right?

Well to convert somebody to Christianity you not only have to convince them of the existance of a supreme being, you must also convince them that it is the Christian god.

True, but if they already believe in God as many people do, then there's no reason why I can't show that God must have omnipotent qualities, for instance, God by default has to exist outside the universe and not bound by universal laws, first because the Bible says so, secondly because there's some Atheistic proof against any gods existing inside our universe or a universe-like environment that have infinite anything, it's actually very sensible, with limitations of environments and whatnot...but anyway, after you can show that, you can then say that since there is no universe outside the universe of course, there are no laws limiting anything, and therefore, anything existing there has to have infinite power, and with infinite power you need infinite wisdom to understand how to control it and not have some weird trans-universal explosion, and you need infinite goodness so the infinite power doesn't corrupt you, (That works literally as well as philosophically, get enough energy and anything will melt down at least in this universe without being perfectly able to resist energy.) and with infinite goodness you need infinite love and infinite justice, and from there you can get anything else the Bible defines God as. Now, as for starting with a person that believes God doesn't exist, I don't think i've said this yet, but i'd start by pointing out that all buildings have a builder, and that all cars have a carmaker, even though we can't see, hear, touch, smell, or taste the carmaker or builder, we must know he/she logically exists. So therefore, creation, especially considering how far more complex it is on a fundamental level than we can even hope to replicate, must have a creator. To tell you the truth, I think I saw someone try to refute this argument before on this forum or somewhere else but I can't remember the substance of it, if there's something people say is wrong with this argument, i'd like to know what it is to be informed and all :/.

As I understand it in Islam hell isn't eternal except for idolators and those who worship 'false gods', everyone else will be forgiven in time due to the omnibenevolence of Allah.

I'm not quite sure why you're bringing Sheol into this, the Islamic hell is called Jahannam if you're interested.

Well, that is slightly more merciful, but it's still not infinitly merciful, a certain group of people still perish forever in Hell, and people still get punished in the meantime regardless. I brought in the Sheol thing just to try and head off a debate in case it started or something, which I guess it wouldn't then.

Saying that we are born as sinners is opening a can of worms really, how can someone be guilty of a crime if they never had a choice in whether they commited it? It is that kind of belief that would prevent me from becoming a Christian even if I did believe in god.

But how could even a baby say it is innocent, when we are all born self-centered, wanting our own needs above faith in God, a violation of the 1st commandment? And that's how what Adam did ruined everything, all his descendents just kept having offspring that, by nature, have to all be self-centered the moment they are born. Yes, I know that at face value this might appear wrong to some people, but if you take away a babies cute face and realize how much they cry for their own needs, demand your attention, and basically do wrong even without being able to comphrehend it intellectually, you see how the self-centered nature of man doesn't make one sin by choice, but by simply being a human. For instance, I am a teenage boy. As a teenage boy, certain....changes happen to my body at around my age. Looking at girls is not exactly the same as it was before. There is always a sense to have lust, not because I choose to have a sense, (I've tried conditioning myself against it before, but after we learned about hormones in biology, I kinda realized that's not gonna work) but because my hormones must try to tempt me, because I too am evil by nature. Yes, one could argue that those urges are all caused by hormones and not me, but you can ignore it temporarily enough not to actually lust after people and get out of whatever situation your in that's causing you to lust, and if I was infinitly good, (which im not) then I could just ignore the urge to lust forever, but since nobody can do that, it's just another thing which must make us bad by nature.

Mind if I try to lump all these together, i'd like to make a more widespread point and its too scatterd going over these individual verses.

But he doesn't describe a literal hell, the most you've is a few vague quotes which could possibly be describing hell but could easily be describing something else. You would have thought that God would be a little more open about it, something along the line of "Oh by the way guys, if you're bad there's an eternal firepit waiting for you when you die.", instead, if we assume that hell does exist, the best he does is drop the occaissonal hint which could easily be misinterpretted. It's a bit like a girl who assumes that you can read her mind perfectly after going out with her for two weeks.

'No payment is ever enough that he should live on forever and not see decay'; it never says that they can see the decay, it says that money can't buy eternal life. There is no mention of hell here.

The New Testament only mentions Heaven and Hell, we're talking about the Old Testament. This link (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=614&letter=S&search=sheol) contains plenty of Old Testament references to Sheol.

No, you're still thinking in terms of the New Testament. In the Old Testament when god judged someone he dealt out punishment in this world which is why all of the punishments from god that Job invites are in this world. The confrontation that he fears is presumably also in this world. Also, destruction doesn't have to be permanent, they are destroyed in this world and then descend to Sheol or simply the grave depending on how you translate it, you are trying to force Christian views onto Jewish tradition.

He is fearing physical death. Obviously pit it doesn't mean one grave, it could mean either Sheol or just death.

Oh, and Sheol would fit with the concept of separation from god, it was viewed as being the furthest point from heaven.

I'm not interested in proving that hell exists because you can't, I'm interested in you proving that the Hebrews actually had a concept of hell.

Ok, let me try this another way. The OT might not be amazingly clear about Hell and the specifics if you insist that Sheol can never mean Hell, but it is made clear that God is a God of justice in the OT. If there is no Hell, the only real option is that those God judges guilty go to sleep so to speak and never wake up. The Bible doesn't suggest people in the OT who do not believe in God simply stop thinking for all eternity the moment they die, it doesn't just use words like "oblivion" to describe it, Sheol is described as a gloomy place, where the dead are never rembered anymore, and like you said, is separation from God. But if you know it fits with the concept of separation from God and the furthest point from heaven, then how can it be merely going to sleep forever gloomily or something? And furthermore, in the OT times, many times when the Israelites strayed from God, God let them go at it for awhile until He started earthly judgement on them. In this time, people lived and died. Those people who died would not be recieving punishment if all that happened was you merely stopped thinking and no judgement was given after death, how then can Sheol not be a place of punishment, if it is not, then God wouldn't be infinitly judging everyone, and there would be a serious problem with the Bible. And even with people God did judge back then while in the world, whatever God did there to them couldn't of been infinite justice, because it would of killed them eventually, and if they all went to sleep, then God couldn't get infinite justice anymore if their not actually in Hell or even aware of anything. You can be oblivious and still feel judgement too, but not if your asleep forever. Furthermore, I am not forcing Christian beliefs onto the Bible, the Bible is the Christian belief, just because the ancient Hebrew language had to be so obscure about things doesn't mean that God is not just in the OT but is in the NT, nor does it mean I automatically have no claim to the old testiment, without that, there is no way to justify that Christ was the savior, as all the prophecies He needed to fulfill and did fulfill are mentioned in it.


You are confusing the meaning of 'forget' here, you are using 'forget' to mean 'to lose belief in' rather than 'to lose knowledge of a thing'. I understand the concept of hell but I reject any factual basis for it. People haven't forgotten the meaning of hell, they are simply rejecting it in the same way that they have rejected heliocentrism but still understand the concept. In the same way even if the Hebrews stopped believing in hell they would still understand the meaning of it, and as hell would have been a central tenet of their religion they wouldn't have rejected it.

Not quite with the Hebrews, you see, what happened commonly when the Jews stopped believing in God in the OT was that they no longer read the Torah or payed attention to any of those laws much, in fact, one of the times that the Jews came back to God was when one of the Hebrew kings found a copy of the Torah lying on the ground in his palace or something I think, panicked when he realized what had been happening for so many years, and God stopped an incoming famine from lasting nearly as long as it would of for the people who returned to Him because they found the Torah again. They literally almost all stopped being part of the Hebrew religion, and with that, of course they could deny Hell existed, as they wern't really listening to God's word anyway, and therefore wern't getting the right perspective on it. And not everyone grows up knowing about the Biblical definition of hell these days, either they don't care from the beginning or people shield it from them, so some people have to have forgotten about Hell, simply from a sheer lack of caring about it. Many people just plain don't care, you know? :/

I was actually refering to moral statements such as 'abortion is wrong' or 'giving to charity is good' as you founded universal moral truths on the idea that everyone has knowledge of them and it is not merely inate to the culture.
I could ask everyone if something is evil, anything at all. If their a relativist, then having absolute truth would be wrong to them, and if not caring about the debate was their agenda, then caring about the debate would be wrong, and eventually, everyone is going to be able to think of something that they consider wrong, unless they like refuse to answer or something, and it would be a unanimous "yes" if everything went perfectly, as in nobody lying.

Quick question to the Christians...

Why in the name of (blank) is Greek mythology so darn close to your religion? The parallels are uncanny. The flood myth, for example. The flood was used to purge humanity from evil. Man and woman, both virtuous and true, are granted by the god(s) a chance to live and continue the human race. The journey of the great ocean ends at a great mountain. Ergo, a vengeful god(s) destoyed most of what (s)he created in order to save it, and cover his/her ass, basically. You state it yourselves, all mythology is to be dismissed as untrue and fantasy, used to COMPENSATE for a lack of knowledge about nature. Yet the Bible is true; the word of God is true.

So why are so many parallels draw between mythology (lies), and the Bible (truth?)? I have attempted to ask my teacher (I attend a Christian school, to my slight dismay) and she is not able to answer me with a statement that is valid and believable.

"Now about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do want want you to be ignorant."
~1 Cor. 12:1

Uhh, thats firstly a misquote of 1 corinthians, it's I do not want you to be ignorant, changing verses like that is really not a good thing to do...at all. But on to your question, the reason many religions like that often stem from the ideas of the OT and the like is because in the beginning, everyone got their information on who God was and did from Adam and Eve, they spread the story among their children, and I assume their grandchildren as well. However, as people spread out over more lands, a game of telephone started occuring, and then I think you got something called Zorastianism or something, which is like the world's first organized religion. (God didn't really so much organize a belief system for Adam and Eve as much) Then of course, the flood came, and everyone died except for Noah, his wife, and some other family members, who did know the true story about God, even when others were just busy having fun and whooping it up in life, generally doing the most immoral things they possibly wanted to do. So then, the telephone game just started all over again with Noah and his children but this time everybody knew that it was because of a huge flood, and as they all migrated farther outward, the story apparently got corrupted or people simply forgot through lack of caring, and kept changing it until they decided to throw in some of their own Gods, so all the other stories besides the Bible were fake, but because many of Noah's descendents stayed in one area, they could keep the story correct while in a tightly knit society relatively, whereas people migrating to more far-flung areas lost this ability of self-correction through other people.

But how could even a baby say it is innocent, when we are all born self-centered, wanting our own needs above faith in God, a violation of the 1st commandment? And that's how what Adam did ruined everything, all his descendents just kept having offspring that, by nature, have to all be self-centered the moment they are born.

(emphasis added)

This in particular needs to be responded to, because it explains concisely why I find your beliefs to be so disgusting, I have actually changed my life habits to counter them. (In honor of you, I've started publicly debating the Christian preachers on the street, and had some good results).

So, a baby is self centered? For wanting its own needs "above faith in God?"

If thats what you see when you look at a baby, no wonder it doesn't bother you to have their heads bashed against stones for the sins of their fathers.

I honestly hope you never have children. If you can't understand that a baby is born with needs it can't control, and reacts to them fairly and normally, and is therefore innocent by definition, you are not fit to care for another human being. You are not guilty of what you cannot control.

But how can a baby say it is innocent

You should wear a t-shirt that says this, so people know what you are.

Interesting. I've often used world is flat analogy.

You missed one thing Theorb

How does any one record an event that happened before their time? I guess you could try word of mouth passed down through generations but that wouldn't account for the Godlike story telling through out much of the Bible. Godlike story telling is when an event describes all the participants in an events instead of giving the experience of one participant in a event. The story of Adam and Eve isn't told from the perspective of either Adam and Eve the story is told as if God is giving an account. The are many things stated in the Bible for which no one has any means by which to know. The Adam and Eve story is a good example.

Also I think You could bring me from flat earth to globe earth. It might take a hell of a lot but it could be done. To give an example I may need to look out across the ocean and see ships disappear over the hump. I may need some time with a telescope. I may nee to learn about gravity. The complex math involved in calculating orbits etc. etc. I honestly doubt you can take me from slithering snakes to talking snakes.

Think on it does all the stuff you believe honestly make sense to you? Can you do the equivalent of repair work or engineering with the spiritual wisdom you believe you have? Can you add Jesus to the depressed and see hope. Can you add the ten commandments to the depraved and see sympathy? I question psychiatry because I can't see the mechanics of it working. I can take a disfunction car to the car mechanic and come out with a functional car, I can take my computer to a technician and see a improvement. I can take myself to a medical doctor and see myself get better. I can see the science of avionics work whenever a plane or a jet goes up in the air. How am I to know Jesus works? How am I to know Jesus isn't just a placebo effect? If we where to do a blind study of Jesus people and evil atheists would I be able to see the difference between the two groups without having to cheat?

Well your first point isn't much of a problem, the Torah (First 5 books I think?) was written by Moses, because God was dictating to him while on the mountain, so it's God's word coming directly to get the first written version of what really happened.

Second, do you at least see how it would be very difficult for the flat earth people to accept a spherical earth, especially with a pre-disposed idea to very harshly disbelieve anything not from the church, if your using that kind of analysis on other ideas? And I don't know what you mean by take you from slithering snakes to talking snakes, you mean prove the Bible or spill out the evangelistic method I started in this thread with again to convince you of Christianity, or what are you looking for?

Thirdly, the thing is, Christ doesn't effect people to just make them "better" or to "fix" the problem of Sin, the Bible says we are free from sin, but it doesn't mean we're immune to commiting it. It does say that we should let our little light shine so to speak, but you have to understand, if you take Christians from just the vast majority of people in the world calling themselves Christian, you'll actually get an astounding number of very different beliefs, many of them very un-Biblical. The point is though, Christ didn't come to improve everyone's morality, He came to save us from our failed morality that could not enter heaven, so therefore, He had to take the punishment for our failures onto Himself, otherwise, how could God call Himself infinitly loving, and then all the prophecies would be messed up.

(emphasis added)

This in particular needs to be responded to, because it explains concisely why I find your beliefs to be so disgusting, I have actually changed my life habits to counter them. (In honor of you, I've started publicly debating the Christian preachers on the street, and had some good results).

So, a baby is self centered? For wanting its own needs "above faith in God?"

If thats what you see when you look at a baby, no wonder it doesn't bother you to have their heads bashed against stones for the sins of their fathers.

I honestly hope you never have children. If you can't understand that a baby is born with needs it can't control, and reacts to them fairly and normally, and is therefore innocent by definition, you are not fit to care for another human being. You are not guilty of what you cannot control.



You should wear a t-shirt that says this, so people know what you are.

You've started publicaly debating people on the street at 2-4 A.M. in the morning? And your once again overblowing the punishment and conveniently leaving out the astounding fact that God wouldn't of killed anyone if He knew that they could possibly of deserved to live, it's not a matter of God cutting out their lives before they have a chance to be saved, it was a matter of God knew they wouldn't of been able to be saved in the first place, it just would of amounted to the exact same fate for every single one of those children in the end anyway whether they died early or later, and besides, it would bother me today if I saw them being punished for that, because that rule was ended thousands of years ago, God saw it was appropriate for one time period when the rule was able to have a root in justice, and then saw it was no longer appropriate for another time period, and changed it therefore. It does not apply today. That would be bad, not just because it is unbiblical to be applied today, but then everyone gets to go to Hell despite Christ, and that's not right! Furthermore, I specifically stated that the reason that babies need things and do not trust in God first is because it simply "is" their nature, it's not a matter of that I should kill off my children if I ever have any because they sin, once again, that'd be a Matthew 7:1 violation and a violation of the 6th commandment to boot, but just because I think a baby has a sinful nature just like the rest of us doesn't mean I couldn't love it anyway, that's ridiculous, God loved us even when we all had a sinful nature, why can't we do the same thing with our own children? God gives both justice and forgiveness, humans are not capable of giving compleatly just justice from an infinitly just standpoint, but we are commanded to give forgiveness. I do not see how being commanded to forgive is such a horrible, baby killing event that requires one to debate supposed Christians at 4 A.M. in the morning in the streets who apparently either don't know what the Bible says or didn't care in the first place...what time zone are you in anyway? :/

You made a statement that people who don't believe as you do have no common sense. That's a false generalization implying a negative characteristic. That's bigotry.

I don't have to site verses, I just have to point out what you yourself have said. The most conclusive evidence of your bigotry is your own posting.

No, I made a statement that those who don't believe as God commands us to believe have no common sense, and worse, are considered fools by God. It would be bigoted if I said that they are fools without making it clear that God is the one doing the judging not me, because first I can't judge whether or not they might just pretending to be Atheist for some game or something, and secondly, what if their an undercover Christian and I call them a fool, then the Bible says I would be in danger of the fires of Hell. That is not the objective, and whether you think it's a false generalization does not override what God said about it, nor does it being negative over-ride it either.

You've started publicaly debating people on the street at 2-4 A.M. in the morning?

No, I've been doing it in the afternoon. Where do you get your ridiculous assumptions from?

And your once again overblowing the punishment

How do you "overblow" death and hell?

and conveniently leaving out the astounding fact that God wouldn't of killed anyone if He knew that they could possibly of deserved to live,

You never answer this before. What does a baby due to not deserve to live?


it's not a matter of God cutting out their lives before they have a chance to be saved, it was a matter of God knew they wouldn't of been able to be saved in the first place,

Wow, so much for free will. If he knows in advance, why not kill us all?

it just would of amounted to the exact same fate for every single one of those children in the end anyway whether they died early or later, and besides, it would bother me today if I saw them being punished for that, because that rule was ended thousands of years ago, God saw it was appropriate for one time period when the rule was able to have a root in justice, and then saw it was no longer appropriate for another time period, and changed it therefore. It does not apply today.

Where on my calendar should I note the time periods when its okay to slaughter children? News flash: If you can even imagine a time when its okay to kill children for the crimes of their fathers, you need counseling.


I do not see how being commanded to forgive is such a horrible, baby killing event

It isn't. Calling babykilling "justice" and "wisdom" is a horrible, baby killing event.

that requires one to debate supposed Christians at 4 A.M. in the morning in the streets who apparently either don't know what the Bible says or didn't care in the first place...what time zone are you in anyway? :/

You constantly leap to the most absurd, unfounded assumptions. I debated the Christians at a little after 2:00PM in the afternoon on Thursday.

Thankfully, I'm not in a timezone where its okay for someone to kill me if my father behaves immorally. After all, you think thats a function of the times...